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CO and the Temperature Structure of the Solar AtmosphereThe surface layers of the Sun provide a crucial boundary condition for many of the processes that occur in the deep interior. The stratification of the outer solar atmosphere once was thought to be well understood. However, studies of thermally sensitive molecular absorptions in the infrared revealed puzzling anomalies. Strong lines of the CO fundamental vibration-rotation bands near 5 microns showed very cool temperatures at the extreme limb, and remarkable off-limb emissions extending well into the supposedly hot chromosphere. The conflicting pictures of the photosphere/chromosphere interface, from the widely separated wavelength regimes, has raised suspicions that those "layers" of the atmosphere are much more inhomogeneous than previously suspected. One proposal is that the low chromosphere is dominated by cool gas--the "COmosphere," if you will--which is threaded by a network of persistent small-scale hot magnetic filaments and occasionally disrupted by localized acoustic disturbances. The COmosphere is capped by the merged fields of the network elements in the chromospheric "canopy." I will describe the evidence in favor of that model, including recent work at the NSO McMath-Pierce telescope (including use of the new "Phoenix" spectrometer) and translimb far-UV spectroscopy by SOHO/SUMER.
Document ID
19990114317
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Ayres, Thomas R.
(Colorado Univ. Boulder, CO United States)
Date Acquired
August 19, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 1997
Subject Category
Astronomy
Meeting Information
Meeting: New Eyes to See Inside the Sun and Stars
Location: Kyoto
Country: Japan
Start Date: August 18, 1997
End Date: August 22, 1997
Sponsors: International Astronomical Union
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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