The active region NOAA 8032 of April 15, 1997 was observed to evolve rapidly. The GOES X-ray data showed a number of sub-flares and two C-class flares during the 8–9 hours of its evolution. The magnetic evolution of this region is studied to ascertain its role in flare production. Large changes were observed in magnetic field configuration due to the emergence of new magnetic flux regions (EFR). Most of the new emergence occured very close to the existing magnetic regions, which resulted in strong magnetic field gradients in this region. EFR driven reconnection of the field lines and subsequent flux cancellation might be the reason for the continuous occurrence of sub-flares and other related activities.

We have made an attempt to obtain relationship of magnetic shear and vertical currents in NOAA AR7321. Intercomparison of changes observed at several flaring and non-flaring sites associated with an M4/2B flare observed on October 26, 1992 is reported.

The index of scintillation measurement is a good parameter to compare different sites for image quality or ‘seeing’. We have developed a scintillometer, which is deployed on the high resolution SPAR telescope in the island site of Udaipur Solar Observatory, for the site characterization to specify the proposed MAST (Multi Application Solar Telescope). The scintillometer consists of a miniature telescope, termed as micro telescope (4 mm aperture, 15 mm focal length) mounted on a drive which tracks the Sun continuously, associated amplifiers and a data acquisition system. A photodiode is used as the detector. The telescope along with detector was obtained from National Solar Observatory (NSO), and is similar to the one used for Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) site survey. At USO we developed the amplifier and data acquisition system for the scintillometer. A 24-bit analog to digital converter based system was designed, assembled, tested and used as the data acquisition system (DAS). In this paper, we discuss the instrumentation and present the initial results.