• K. SANKARASUBRAMANIAN

Articles written in Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy

• Stokes polarimetry at the Kodaikanal tower tunnel telescope

A Stokes Polarimeter has been developed using a masked CCD arrangement for the measurement of the vector magnetic field of sunspots. Charge shifting within the CCD is used to record near simultaneous orthogonal polarisation. The testing of the Stokes Polarimeter and the behavior of the integrated system combined with the Kodaikanal tower tunnel telescope will be discussed.

• High Resolution Observations using Adaptive Optics: Achievements and Future Needs

Over the last few years, several interesting observations were obtained with the help of solar Adaptive Optics (AO). In this paper, few observations made using the solarAOare enlightened and briefly discussed. A list of disadvantages with the current AO system are presented. With telescopes larger than 1.5 m expected during the next decade, there is a need to develop the existing AO technologies for large aperture telescopes. Some aspects of this development are highlighted. Finally, the recent AO developments in India are also presented.

• In-orbit Performance of UVIT and First Results

The performance of the ultraviolet telescope (UVIT) on-board AstroSat is reported. The performance in orbit is also compared with estimates made from the calibrations done on the ground. The sensitivity is found to be within ∼15% of the estimates, and the spatial resolution in the NUV is found to exceed significantly the design value of 1.8′′ and it is marginally better in the FUV. Images obtained from UVIT are presented to illustrate the details revealed by the high spatial resolution. The potential of multi-band observations in the ultraviolet with high spatial resolution is illustrated by some results.

• Relation between solar flares and halo coronal mass ejections

Solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are two very important active events from Sun. Inspite of several theoretical and statistical analyses, the relation between solar flares and CMEs is so far not well established, and strong opinions and arguments still continue. Statistical approaches use a lot of dataavailable from many measurements by space and ground instruments. They try to map the measured parameters of one event to that of another event and try to establish the relation between them. Halo CMEs are a kind of special CMEs in the sense that they are directed towards Earth and hence can influence Earth’s atmosphere. For a scientist interested in Sun–Earth interactions and the effect on Earth’s atmosphere, study of Halo CMEs is extremely important. In this paper the relation between solar flares and Halo CMEs is studied. The data setsused are for the period from October 2006 to March 2017. For the first time, the Halo CMEs are categorized into four different groups based on the relative time of occurrence with respect to the flares and the relation between the flare and Halo CME parameters is studied. It is shown that: (a) there is a good correlation between certain flare parameters (like flare flux and peak intensity) and CME parameters (like kinetic energy, linear speed, and mass) especially when the Halo CME occurs during the flare; (b) For the same set of CMEs, the correlation is poor with flare duration; and (c) For CMEs before or after the flare, the correlation is lesser than the CMEs occurring during the flare.

• H$\alpha$ full line spectropolarimetry as diagnostics of chromospheric magnetic field

Analysis of spectropolarimetric observations of two circular sunspots located close to disk centre in H$\alpha$ (6562.8 Å) and Fe i (6569.22 Å) is presented in this paper. The corresponding active region numbers areNOAA 10940 and NOAA 10941 referred to as AR1 and AR2, respectively. The vector magnetic field at the photosphere is derived through inversion of Stokes profiles of Fe I under Milne–Eddington atmospheric model. The chromospheric vector magnetic field is derived from H$\alpha$ Stokes profiles under weak-field approximation. Azimuthally averaged magnetic field as a function of radial distance from the centre of sunspot at the photosphere and chromosphere are studied. At the photosphere, the radial variation shows a well known behaviour that the total field and the line-of-sight (LOS) component monotonically decrease from centre to the edge of the sunspot and the transverse component initially increases, reaches a maximum close to half the sunspot radius and thendecreases. LOS and the transverse components become equal close to half the sunspot radius consistent with the earlier findings. At the chromosphere, all the components of the magnetic field decrease with the sunspot radius. However, the LOS component decreases monotonically whereas the transverse component decreases monotonically up to about 0.6 times the sunspot radius after which it reaches a constant value. Azimuthally averaged magnetic field gradient from photosphere to chromosphere is also presented here.

• # Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy

Volume 41, 2020
All articles
Continuous Article Publishing mode

• # Continuous Article Publication

Posted on January 27, 2016

Since January 2016, the Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy has moved to Continuous Article Publishing (CAP) mode. This means that each accepted article is being published immediately online with DOI and article citation ID with starting page number 1. Articles are also visible in Web of Science immediately. All these have helped shorten the publication time and have improved the visibility of the articles.

• # Editorial Note on Continuous Article Publication

Posted on July 25, 2019