Solar Physics Journal

Isabel Lipartito: Astronomy and Physics Double Major

Smith College

High-Speed Phenomena in the Solar Atmosphere

Advisor: Phil Judge

Week 1: June 3rd-9th.

-Monday:

Got CatCard/keys/explored MSU. Got IDL and Helios up and running. Practiced some basic IDL. Met with Phil to discuss nature of project: investigating plasma tubes vs plasma sheets in the solar atmosphere.

-Tuesday:

More intense IDL session- learned about logic commands, loops, other sorts of statements. Lecture regarding the pressure-gravity balance in the Sun and fusion in the Sun. Discussed more solar physics theory with Phil. Discovered that tubes filled with plasma (magnetic tubes/phenomena) have generally been accepted as the norm in the Chromosphere but that there appears to be some holes regarding this theory. Evidence as Phil has found demonstrates that there actually might be sheets (like curtains) of plasma rather than tubes and that the appearance of tubes might actually be an optical phenomenon? There are many papers published regarding tubes and so much explanations on how the physics works there to produce what we see, but it seems that everything is kind of forced to fit.

-Wednesday:

Learned how to import data into IDL and some means of manipulating it. Read through many papers: both from Phil and others which reject the sheet idea. Opponents say that this is still a 1-D phenomenon (tubular) and that what we see can be explained by rapid wave motion and variation. Phil says that this is too complicated an explanation and that this is actually simplest if we say it is a 2-D phenomenon (the sheets).

In the 1970s, Parker proposed evidence for sheets in the chromosphere/ a theoretical model. And now, as I have read papers from Judge et al, there appears to be some solid evidence in favor of this sheet phenomenon as the magnetic corrals of plasma.

-Thursday:

Learned to plot data, graph it, view it, etc. Began a small project manipulating some sample data provided by Chris Lowder. We are going to take a small region of an image where there is a solar flare and find the average intensity and plot it. Read some more papers for Phil. Had a lecture regarding the magnetic field of the Sun and energy transport in the Sun (and sunspots). Discussed how to manipulate data with Phil. Learned about the data we have: the .fits files have already been corrected and reduced by the telescope. We have ground-based data.

The goals now are to work with the .sav file data (which cannot simply be brought in to IDL using read_sdo, etc. We want to map these images and properly center them and find the correct scaling/coordinates relative to where they were taken at the Sun. Learned how to import data, restore, data, and map/rotate images. Our .sav files are composed of a 2-D+ data array, some of which are 3-D because there are many different images taken over a period of time. Some of them are 4-D because of the time thing and because they were taken for different wavelengths. We can use the reform command and xmovie to manage them: make a movie to view them over time.

-Friday:

Finished project with Chris Lowder. Able to plot median, average, total intensities over a 2-D region. Worked on my own exploring the data (.fits and .sav): plotting it, xmovie-ing it, and writing a few introductory programs and scripts. Wrote a start_up script to open and load the data. Worked on a program that would subtract each successive image from the previous one for a 3-D .sav file and then display the subtracted pieces in xmovie so one can view the changes in intensity solely. Applied it to two .sav files: s_4 and s_12. Might be a good idea to somehow remove for loops to speed it up if it turns out that this is useful. Ok for now. Might also be a good idea to not subtract each image from the next but to find an average overlying intensity and subtract that from the whole set. More to come on this.

Worked on the mapping issue. Made a map for one of the images (s_12) and tried to rotate it and compare it to the .fits files.

Week 2: June 10th-16th.

-Monday:

Read through the papers (for/opposing) once again and made some more notes of arguments supporting tubes/ supporting sheets. Discussed further solar physics theory with Phil regarding this project.

-We are dealing with the Hydrogen-A line 656.3 nm. Due to doppler shifting, random motion kinetic energy of atoms (and maybe magnetic field splitting), this line is rather broad. Observed head-on, it is an absorption line as the solar atmosphere absorbs the energy from the outcoming radiation. Observed from the top of the Sun, it is an emission line as the radiation is re-emitted.

-Not only is there random motion due to the kinetic energy of the particles (which are ionized plasma), the gas that we are observing is systematically moving upwards, downwards (oscillating). This therefore leads to Doppler brightening/dimming if we look at the same wavelength as the gas is moving back and forth.

We are looking at the same wavelength in both images, but in the lower, red-shifted one, we end up seeing a brighter outcome as we are actually looking at a red-shifted wavelength that is automatically brighter when stationary. It is the other way around for Doppler dimming. We have images taken for a single wavelength over a period of oscillation and for several wavelengths over one or multiple times. There is the issue that we cannot take data fast enough to have it done before one period of oscillations is finished.

-Pressure of the gas= its average kinetic energy. Pressure of a collision is 2-D, looking at random motion from one line of sight is 1-D. The overall motion of the plasma is likely to exceed the random motion. The idea here is that the motion of the plasma (oscillatory), is far too fast! If you work it out using doppler broadening (delta lambda/lambda = delta v/v = v/c), then the speed of the gas could be about 10 times the speed of sound: supersonic!!

-But if it is supersonic, why the lack of the shocks/ general excitement that have to accompany things traveling faster than sound? Thus, it is possible that this is an optical thing: we are just seeing the 1-D manifestation of something that is actually 2-D (there are sheets). Other people studying this say that these are set up standing waves. The issue that over the proposed flux tube, the density changes and that an actual standing wave could only exist over a portion of the tube (the middle).

-We would need a massive shock at each end to cause such a standing wave! The people supporting the flux tube model state that the standing waves are a combination of two moving waves that are moving in different directions. If we could somehow set up such a standing wave:

y= y0sin(kx-wt) + y0sin(kx+wt).

The period of such a wave with the granted speed (from the Doppler broadening calculations) and length of the tube must be more than a few seconds! But we are observing these propagations over a much shorter time period! So what is going on? There could be some deeper complexities going on that require plasma physics for an explanation. We are dealing with this situation via magnetohydrodynamics: treating the moving matter as a fluid under the influence of a magnetic field. But that is much more complex! At the moment, we are going to continue using magnetohydrodynamics.

-We thus have an argument for the sheets: what we observe is not consistent with the flux tube idea as things are moving too fast! The other researchers try to cram in explanations and make things fit but Phil believes their argument is crumbling. We are going to further analyze the data we have and make measurements of velocities and Doppler shifts.

-The data consists of the same thing analyzed at different angles: One wavelength over a time period and multiple wavelengths over a single time. We might end up doing some modeling for the plasma sheet idea as it is backed up mathematically/theoretically where as the flux tubes are not so much.

-Tuesday

Had a lecture regarding the magnetic field of the Sun and how we can measure it (via the Zeeman Effect and others; extrapolation).

Worked further on mapping the images via eye-balling the data. Skyped Phil and discussed how this process might be quantified. We want 5 numbers for our image: center (x and y), stretch (x and y), and rotation. We can thus use these parameters to ensure each image is correctly aligned and mapped relative to where it is in the Sun and can be accurately analyzed.

Read up on why standing wave idea is not correct.

Ideas on inconsistencies we might observe:

-No curvature of the tube.

-No density gradient at transition region. No transition region.

-Stuff moving far too fast (extreme redshifts, etc).

-Too much energy losses/ messy medium.

-Too much rapid variability.

-A lot of strange randomness (Team Tube has an argument which requires a rather systematic world).

-Brightness of spicule does not depend on density of plasma/ does depend on plasma temperature and velocity (they said vice versa).

-Wednesday

Phil mailed me a program last night called isabel_align.pro that described how to correctly align images.

-Basically, the idea is to take the time average of the entire sequence to be mapped (the image), estimate the necessary coordinates (xcenter, ycenter, dy, dx, rotation) and put them into the make_map command, and save that file as a reference map (a .sav file).

-Then, it is necessary to find one or two .fits reference files close to the time the image to be mapped was taken at (they can be gotten from http:// sdac.virtualsolar.org/cgi/search). These should be made into maps via the index2map command: index2map, index, data, map and saved as .sav files.

-Use the smooth command and inter_map command to interpolate the .fits data onto the .sav data and make the .sav file into a map.

The blink command: blink,[0,1,2,3] will blink windows for you.

Played with this program during the morning and worked at understanding it. Made a few program versions that use our actual data. These are: make_a_map.pro and smap1600.sav, smap1700.sav, refmap.sav, smaptest.sav

In the afternoon, Phil and I discussed where we are further going with this regarding data analysis. We have 23 .sav files. Some were reduced using the speckle process and some were reduced using the MFBD process. Each of the 23 is a packet that includes the times the images were taken over and their wavelengths. The speckle images have this stored in a structure that becomes available when you use the restore command. We can use the command: help, name, /str to reveal the components of the structure and read the wavelength files/times files.

The MFBD packets have different files containing such information.

The goal now is to compare the different files that we have: compare the speckle process to the MFBD process. This means that we have to compare apples to apples: similar times to similar times, similar wavelengths to similar wavelengths. A good idea will be to divide out the median of each image to normalize them and then blink the images. We can repeat this process over several images to compare how they are similar and different. This is necessary to know as we need to understand the effects due to data reduction and due to actual significant observations. If we observe an inconsistency in one image with respect to another we need to be able to say whether it is a significant observation or just due to how the data was reduced.

It would also be a good idea to do as the environmental scientists do in a field with determining the population density of dandelions but with the population density of fibers in the Sun. This could be done using a computer algorithm but there is the chance that this will be rather complicated to perform as it might take us ages to actually find such an algorithm and tweak it so it works for the fibrils. Phil suggested that we might co-opt a program used to find rivers on a map or jet streams in the air (as the fibrils are rather snaky) but right now I am going to attempt things with my eye! I plan on getting several images and gridding them and determining the population density average in each grid.

We also discussed more of the theory behind this project and its relation to the work by Parker on magnetic sheet structures and tangential discontinuities.

-Thursday

We had a lecture (from Phil) regarding solar variability (it is largely due to magnetism fluctuations!). Found out that we actually do not -understand- a lot of what goes on regarding the Sun (like WHY do sunspots happen, etc)- we are just able to show what happens and qualitatively describe it.

Worked at making comparison programs. At the moment, I have made three.

comparison_general.pro compares two general speckle and MFBD images. s[13] for the speckle and s[6] for the MFBD

Note: The compared images have been median corrected (divide out the median).

compare_blue.pro compares two blue speckle and MFBD images. s[14] for the speckle and s[7] for the MFBD.

compare_red.pro compares two red speckle and MFBD images. s[14] for the speckle and s[12] for the MFBD.

Also began the counting of the fibrils. I have done this for several images and I will do it for a few more and then try and find a sort of population density per image.

-Friday

Continued the counting of the fibrils. So far, I have completed this for 21 images: 11 general images, 5 red wavelength images, and 5 blue wavelength images. My method is that I count the number of fibrils in each image (generally somewhere around 50, but sometimes as much as 70) and then I divide by the number of whole grid boxes. Each mapped image contains 88 whole grid boxes. This is just to get a number to quantify things. Of course, we need a good distribution so 20 is not enough! I am going to make more- maybe get about 100? Probably 50 general images and 25 each of red and blue images. I will compute a total average of fibrils using all the images and then compute some sub-averages using the red and blue images.

Phil suspects that we might observe different average values of fibrils in the red vs. blue images. I have at a glance observed this too: the red images so far seem to have higher numbers of fibrils than the blue images. Maybe this means that more fibrils are redshifted (moving away from us) than are those moving towards us?

Going to use IDL to do some statistical analysis once I have a good widespread distribution.

Wrote a program to better compare the two differently processed image batches: speckle and MFBD. I did this for blue and red (mainly because I am confident that my previous programs comparing blue MFBD vs blue speckle and red MFBD vs red speckle used images that had the same time averages). The programs are Compare_blue.pro and Compare_red.pro. What I do is subtract the median-corrected MFBD from the speckle and then take a small section of the subtracted image ([600:800, 300:500]) and plot it next to the same small section of one of the original median-corrected images (I ended up using the speckle). This small section was chosen because it contains a region of activity that is a good case study to really see the difference between MFBD and speckle. A 200 by 200 plot was the smallest I could get without everything getting terribly pixellated! I blink the frames to demonstrate their differences and the programs also write the subtracted segment and the MFBD segment to a file using the set_plot, ps command.

I think I will add in a few more comparisons following a similar program format but using different images to get a good sample. At the moment, I can see that there is a bit of difference in the speckle and MFBD by looking at the subtracted image, but I want to see how significant this difference might be by getting a few more samples. It is important to understand the exact nature of the difference in the image correction programs so we know whether an observation we make on one image in the future that is inconsistent with other observations regarding different images is due to an actual solar phenomenon or just due to how the images were reduced! And I need to get more samples to write such a conclusion on the nature of MFBD vs speckle. So, the work to be continued involves getting a larger sample size. At the moment, I have a few theories and observations, but I need a statistical sample (or semi-statistical sample) to properly draw some conclusions!

Week 3: June 17th-23rd.

-Monday

Had lecture on the solar atmosphere. It has a lot of activity! Did more work comparing speckle and MFBD images (subtracted them from each other and compared the original images to the subtractions). Did more work regarding the statistical averaging and computations of fibrils per image. At the moment, I have 63 counts of data, but I am going to need more! Began comparing the red and blue images to each other: wrote a program to blink two blue and red images taken at around the same time. I had the program get very close up to fibrils in each image and compare them. Going to have to do this for a lot more images and get a good sample.

-Tuesday

Finished more of the statistical counting and averaging. Showed the red and blue comparison (blue_vs_red) program to Phil and we noticed that things appears like this:

The blue-shifted fibrils (moving towards us in our line of sight) are less numerous than the red-shifted fibrils (moving away from us in our line of sight). And they are different things: some things that appear in the blue image do not appear in the red image and vice versa. So it appears that some of the gas is moving in one direction and some is moving in another direction.

I learned to use x-slice to analyze the spectra of these activity spots. X-slice is a tool that displays the image and has spectral plots for x and y next to it. X will plot the intensity of a certain line in the x direction with wavelength on one axis and x position on the other. Y will do the same, but for y.

We need to make more of these to better analyze the difference between the red and blue images. This, so far at least, is evidence for motion in different directions and maybe more complex motion.

-Wednesday

We had a lecture regarding magnetic fields snapping and reconnecting in the solar atmosphere and how this causes and relates to solar flares. Phil and I decided that it might be a good idea to build a database that will record the wavelengths of the different images and the times at which they were taken. If you search for times in a structure or other file, you will only get the Julian time which is accurate to 2.4 hours (the whole data was taken over 20 minutes!). A script can be written to convert this to Greenwich Mean Time and that is better. Once the database it made, we can just search for a time and find all the images that were made at that time.

This will improve the created comparison for speckle images vs MFBD as we need to have them taken at the same time for a valid comparison! The plan now is to make more comparisons of the red and blue images and see not only how the different red and blue activity spots vary in space but also in time. Hopefully, this will work out to a plausible demonstration of how this might be caused by blowing and turning sheets.

The problem is now that we have observed a lot of evidence for motion away from the sun but not a ton of evidence for motion towards the sun of hot plasma! At the moment, that supports the propagating tube wave idea more as they could be geared to a certain direction. Should not we, with sheets, see equal motion in both directions? At the moment, it is possible that this is due to matter cooling off as it gets very high up and giving off less radiation? Maybe there is a relationship between temperature, height, and n (number density of electrons) that could explain the cooling and harder-to-see nature as things get higher up? Lower n means lower temperature as we get higher and thus less radiation. Can we see this or disprove it?

The goal now is to disprove the sheet model as much as possible, a la Popper science. The key is to remember the difference between what is actual motion and what is apparent motion. Right now, Phil is finishing the database and hopefully I can soon better plot the red and blue images and compare them. Eric Priest is here from Scotland. He is a very famous solar physicist. I have talked with him about my research and he was rather receptive.

-Thursday

Phil finished the database although I am having a hard time getting it to work on my computer. The trick is to know how to order things by time differences, etc. A lot of indexing! Worked more on the counting project! Phil and I further discussed magnetohydrodynamics. As far as I understand, it is the application of fluid mechanics to ionized plasma. I learned that a good deal of classical physics is basically Newtonian Laws, just on varying levels. When you have a group of particles, you need a more complicated system to describe them. You always need to consider what forces are acting on which particles (gravity, magnetism, pressure). We can study the force balance (or lack thereof) and see what is happening with the system. I still need to go through Maxwells Equations as I have yet to take Electricity and Magnetism. Phil lent me a book by Parker on the complexities of solar magnetism so I will be checking it out soon!

-Friday

We had a lecture about the solar wind and what is going on with that. Some particles in the corona basically are able to get away and they certainly do! Phil has decided to revamp the whole database idea: basically, each individual frame is going to be rewritten to a map, properly orientated, and we are going to have 871 frames with the timing information written in. This is necessary because if I want to properly compare MFBD and speckle images or red and blue images, they need to be taken at around the same time. At the moment, it is rather complicated to do that as they are all in these 20 or so .sav files! Things are going to be better this way.

Today, Phil worked on that and I spent a lot of time getting the webpage up. Finally finished the counting project! All the data has been written to a spreadsheet and I have the means and all. Going to import it into IDL for some further data analysis (standard deviation and all).

Week 4: June 24th-30th.

-Monday

We had a lecture from Eric Priest about solar phenomena and basic overviews. We learned that the solar cycle might account for 1/3 of global warming but humans definitely affect the crisis greatly with our augmentation of the greenhouse effect! Professor Priest sought to debunk the myth that the Sun is boring as well as the myth that British guys always dress well for a talk, so he took off his business shirt and tie to reveal a t-shirt haha!

Phil and I developed further our future plans. The database has been developed and I am learning how to use it with the program that he wrote that selects MFBD, speckle, hydrogen, calcium, closely wavelengthed, closely timed files or select combinations of the above. You cannot search for MFBD and speckle at once.

The program is getindex.pro. You use it like this: getindex,'hdtm',sel,m This command uses the index program to search for h (Hydrogen alpha wavelength), d (different wavelengths close in time), t (close in time), and m (MFBD). Files that meet the criteria are saved in the list m. Sel is a numerical list that holds the index numbers of the desired files.

t: time series (fast); m: MFBD; s: Speckle; d: different wavelengths very close in time; h: H-Alpha; c: Calcium line; r: red side; b: blue side; w: wavelength scans only (not MFBD or Speckle). p: similar times yet different processing (for comparing MFBD and Speckle).

The goals for the near future are:

-- Compare MFBD and Speckle better (whole images, select regions) and write a report finalizing what their differences are. We can use the program to find images appropriate for comparison. We might need to combine several MFBD images as speckles are averaged over a longer time period (50 sec) vs MFBDS (5-10 sec).

-- Do the standard deviations for the counting project and write a scientific report on the difference between the red and blue images. The reds have a higher average of fibrils per image so far as compared to the blues. We need to document the procedure and what we found.

-- We have analyzed how structures change from images in one wavelength to images in another. But how do they change over a whole time series? We need to study movies and sets of images in either wavelength over time to better understand how the sun moves and changes.

Finally: the mapping command DROT (we found via sswloc) is able to take an activity region and show how it would look a few hours or days ago when it was at a different region of the Sun. This is done by taking into account differential rotation, models, and some good extrapolation. But of course, it is not going to be perfect- it cannot fully differentiate between each sunspot on the underlying photosphere and a fibril we are studying at the chromosphere!

-Tuesday

We had another lecture regarding magnetohydrodynamics from Eric Priest. This subject is complicated, intricate, and beautiful at once! Basically, it is what happens when you combine magnetic field studies with hydrodynamics: fluid mechanics plus Maxwells equations. I hope to be able to study more of these two fields soon at Smith and get a better understanding of the equations we ran through today.

Finished the counting project finally! All the images are online at the web page as it the report. The conclusions of this project came to that we observe a much higher level of fibrils in the red images than we do with the blue images. We are now ready to move on to higher levels of analysis. The fact that we observe higher activity levels with red than we do with blue might actually be in opposition to what De Pontieu et al are saying. With their flux tube picture, it seems that we might have a more random level of activity in each image and the fact that they are systematically different is interesting.

We discussed further the theory behind this project. Regarding the standing wave flux tube idea, it seems as if we would need to have a shock happening above and below the standing wave region in order to generate two waves that will move in opposite directions and be standing waves. And they need to have roughly the same amplitude and properties. It rather seems strange that this is going to happen at the same time in order to generate such a wave! And then there is the claim that there is a steep pressure gradient at the top of the region where the waves are reflected (we would need this pressure gradient or some sort of change to ensure such a reflection could happen). We just do not seem to observe such a pressure gradient or change as modeling and calculations show (the temperature, pressure relationships with physics).

-Wednesday

We had a final lecture from Eric Priest which discussed the reconnection phenomenon observed in the solar atmosphere and its connection to the magnetohydrodynamics equations. This is very interesting- it appears that magnetic field lines can cross after all!

I now very well understand the data we have! We have MFBD frames and Speckle frames. Red time series and blue time series for H alpha and Ca II (multiple images taken over a rapid time sequence- about 10 seconds). We also have wavelength scans for Ca and Ha: multiple wavelength frames. This is all for the same region on the Sun.

I wrote a program to compare the MFBD and Speckle images: basically subtracting the two and looking at specific regions within them. Phil has written a program called roi.pro (region of interest) that understands how to isolate the specific regions with the map files.

I have concluded that there is no major difference between MFBD and Speckle images. The Speckles were averaged over a longer time period than were the MFBDs so there is thus a greater definition and deeper resolution with the Speckles. But there are no large major differences between two separately processed images (taken at the same wavelength and at the same time). The same amounts and densities of fibrils are there as well as the underlying structures themselves. I have written a report on this with examples which has been posted online. I have confidence that we can go forward and not be concerned about the Speckle and MFBDs having major differences. The program is called MFBD_Speckle_Compare.

We now are interested in comparing the H-alpha and Ca II images: those taken at the same time and with the same color wavelength. We compare -.60 Ca II images to -1.0 or -1.1 H-alphas (this is blue). We compare +60 Ca II images to +1.0, +1.1 images (this is red) and take care to match up times. This program is Ca_vs_HAlpha and it uses the region of interest program as well to isolate regions that have high fibril levels and compare them. At the moment, we get something rather interesting. There will be one fibril in the Ca image in one place and then there will be a similar fibril in the Ha image at the same time but kind of shifted left or right. It is almost as if we are looking at a sort of (flux tube!?) that has the plasma in it moving at different rates: faster in one place where it is more red or blue shifted from the norm and is thus emitting H-Alpha +/- 1.1 from the norm H-Alpha. And slower in the other place where it is less red or blue shifted than it could be from the norm and is thus emitting Ca II +/- .6 from the norm Ca line. We are going to explore this further and even subtract the images to try and -see- the flux tube and connectivity.

-Thursday

Did more work with comparing Ca II and H-Alpha images. I made the program subtract and blink them to try and see the continuity of Ca, then Ha all in one sort of flux tube. ROI does not work with plot_image (and when you subtract things in this new format, you have to take the .data extension of the structure and you end up with a single image) so I had to try and isolate the regions I wanted to compare: Ha, Ca, and then Ha minus Ca! This project is still in progress as we did not actually get them correctly aligned, unfortunately. I am going to apply align_map to the Ha, Ca images and see if I can get them straight.

At the moment, we do not really see that gradient continuity that we want to observe. I found about one example of it fading from black to white: the result of subtracting Ca from Ha and getting a fibril that is emitting partly in Ca emission (moving slower in one place) and that is emitting partly in Ha emission (moving faster in that place). The dark region is Ca and the light region is Ha due to the nature of the Ha-Ca subtraction. This is an indication of one of those flux tube fibrils described by De Pontieu et al. I am going to try and do some more subtractions to see if we can see more of these interesting observations.

-Friday

Worked on the time series project observing H-alpha emission in red and blue (over several seconds) that I described on Monday. I tried to map individual seconds and identify fibrils to see how they move across the image/ appear and disappear. But that is taking a rather long time so Phil helped write a program to view these specific timeseries in xmovie. I will have a better report on what is going on here soon!

Worked on the Ca and H-Alpha project some more as well. We basically have 12 sets of Ca, Ha frames that can be compared to each other as they have been taken at the same time and are of appropriate wavelengths. I found four average values for Ca in the red wavelength, blue wavelength and Ha in the red wavelength, blue wavelength. 6 frame sets are of Ca, Ha in red wavelengths and the other 6 are of the two in the blue wavelengths. For each frame set, I subtracted the appropriate averages (which were found by averaging a time series of red and then blue Ca, Ha) and subtracted the images from each other.

At the moment, within the subtractions, I have only found one solid example of the gradient speed flux tube that is an illustration of the ideas posed by De Pontieu that there is an accelerated flux tube of plasma in the chromosphere (going slow, then fast). I need to align the images better and see if I can find more examples. It seemed in the individual frames of Ca and Ha that we might have evidence for this.

Phil has drawn up a chart of what we want to look for in the images. We have already found a numerical value for the red fibrils vs blue fibrils and we have found zero examples of where red fibrils in one image overlap with blue fibrils. We want to look for the sort of flux tube Ha, Ca connection in red and blue and we want to observe the time series for red and blue fibrils that appear as sheets.

If I cannot find more of the Ha, Ca connection even after align_map, this goes against what De Pontieu is saying- you would think there would be more connected gradient flux tubes if the superfast phenomena we are seeing is indeed plasma accelerated in a flux tube form. Magnetic fields can indeed form flux tubes, but the magnetodynamics of the chromosphere is incredible complex. We can have a tube with tubes inside it! We have x-point and null points where the reconnection occurs. The main idea here that things might not be so simple and tube-y as others say it might be as magnetic fields have the option of doing whatever they feel like doing! What about if these many disorganized tubes cross or interact with each other and form a sort of sheet at their boundaries with plasma interspersed like jelly?

The important thing here is that we need to be on the lookout for observations that support or go against either idea. What Phil is arguing is valid due to the fact that things are incredibly complicated up in the chromosphere and we cannot simply state that things must be all collected and all in tubes. What we are seeing certainly might be due to the rotations of a plasma sheet. It is going to be an interesting step if we do not observe extensively these gradient tubes!

Week 5: July 1st-7th.

-Monday

Worked on mapping images with the align_map command. We want to align the H-Alpha and Ca II images that we are comparing. I finally got it to work, but I cannot really see any more flux tubes than those that I saw earlier. Need to discuss with Phil what this all means.

Used the xmovie program Phil wrote to make a few movies of the red and blue time sequence. Monitored the red and blue fibrils and tried to determine for how long were they all were on the screen. Some appeared to be around for more than a minute whereas some were only present for around 9-10 seconds! Not sure of the meaning of all this. Is this expected?

Here is a summary of what I found:

getindex,tbmh,b,blue

90 frames from 14:18:45.60 to 14:20:54.97, display (300:600,300:600,*)

Number of frames fibril 1 lasted, starting from beginning: 20 frames Translates to over 9 seconds

Number of frames fibril 2 lasted, starting from beginning: 18 frames Translates to about 9 seconds

Number of frames fibril 3 lasted, starting from frame 40: 23 frames Translates to about 10 seconds

Fibril 4 lasted over 45 frames, which is about 50 seconds

Fibril 5 must have lasted about 62 seconds

Fibril 6 lasted about 62 seconds

display (600:800,600:800,*)

Fibril 7 lasted over 9 seconds

Fibril 8 lasted over a minute

getindex, trmh,r,red

display (300:600,300:600,*)

Fibril 1 lasted for about 19 frames, about a minute

Fibril 2 lasted for about a minute as well

Fibril 3 lasted for about half a minute

Fibril 4 lasted for about 20 seconds

Fibril 5 lasted for about 20-30 seconds

Fibril 6 lasted for about a minute

Fibril 7 lasted for about 20 seconds

Fibril 8 lasted for about 10 seconds

Conclusion of the day: Not sure what this all means, need to ask Phil!!

-Tuesday

Going to delay worrying about the work done on Monday as we decided to finish the H-Alpha and Ca II comparison. Used align_map to align the Ca images to the H-Alpha images and subtracted the background photosphere. The program is called Ca_vs_Halpha.

Ran the program with bated breath. Annnddd: No more flux tube evidence than that which we saw earlier!! Out of 20 or so samples, there is literally one solid example of the black-and-white gradient we should extensively observe! Only one example indicating faster motion with one part of the flux tube and slower motion in the other part which is proposed in the flux tube standing wave model- accelerated tubes of plasma!

Interesting results. We decided to plan for the future. Perhaps we will write a modeling program that will represent the curtain-plasma-sheets that we are hoping to observe and compare it to what we are seeing in the data. Or we might continue with what we are doing (scrutinizing the data) and try to find some evidence proving/disproving the sheet model.

-Wednesday

The Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society is going to be holding its conferences at MSU this year! So we are all working on midterm posters and presentations because as solar physics REU students, we are going to get to be represented!

Worked on the poster all day; the link is posted online. Nothing much to report, just solidified the results we have so far.

RESULTS WE HAVE SO FAR

-------There are more spicules observed in the red wing than the blue wing of H-Alpha. This might mean that the stuff is moving more in one direction than another.

-------There has only been one observed flux tube in our Ca, H-Alpha image comparisons. We should have seen a much higher number of these as predicted by the flux tube model: there should be a whole ton of accelerated flux tubes!

THEORETICAL DISCUSSIONS

------Standing waves require a set of shocks to generate at either end of the flux tube and propagation region. A lot of maybes.

------There appears to be not a steep enough pressure gradient at the transition region to ensure reflection.

------Flux tubes like these appear to require theoretical acrobatics to generate?

------Parkers theory of tangential discontinuities resulting in sheet structures of plasma at those TDs and where flux tubes get weird could be applied here.

-------We are not denying the existence of flux tubes- they do work to explain Type I Spicules. The idea here is that the Type IIs might be caused by something else- rather than standing waves of plasma.

------Why should is it necessary to stretch one theory to fit everything, especially when its problems are apparent.

------Maybe we need to move on to something new to properly explain what we are seeing. Supersonic motion is a result of the standing waves of plasma theory and we are just not really seeing that. Maybe the motion can be better explained as apparent motion- an optical manifestation of rotating and moving sheets of plasma.

-Thursday

4th of July. We went hiking up a mountain near Fairy Lake with the chemistry students and went to watch fireworks.

-Friday

Finished the poster! We are going to have an e-poster as well that will showcase the videos of the H-Alpha and Ca II timeseries along with a few movies that Kevin and Phil made. Write_gif writes images played in a looped sequence to a gif so I used it to make a few gifs of the Ca II and H-Alpha timeseries.

Week 6: July 8th-14th.

-Monday

Left to go back home. Hung out with some more chemistry students! Very tired from camping.

-Tuesday

Put up the still poster and went to several talks at the SPD conference. Had a poster session in the afternoon and many people were interested in the work Phil and I are doing. Everyone loves a good controversy!

-Wednesday

Finished the e-poster, went to more talks. Phil is upset at many people for manipulating the data to fit their theories! Had another poster session.

-Thursday

Went to a few more talks, displayed the e-poster. Many people were interested in the movies and asked us about what we are trying to do. Explained the issues at hand and the data we have/are working with.

-Friday

Phil sent me a program that will model a curtain moving in the wind. A curtain modeling program works by designing a curtain as a series of oscillators in a big row that move with different frequencies and different offsets. The combination (kind of like a Fourier series) of different oscillators will result in the wave-y curtain-y effect that we want to see.

Week 7: July 15th-21st.

-Monday

Kevin Reardon, who produced and reduced the data, was here and able to discuss with us what we have done so far and future proceedings.

In short:

-The Ca II, H-Alpha project we worked on demonstrates an argument against the flux tube model as we did not observe masses of the predicted flux tubes!

-The results from the red and blue wavelength scans we worked with (where we found that there were little to zero cases where the red and blue spicules were aligned and in the same place), could have a lot of meanings. This is summarized in the paper I have written documenting our results so far that will be integrated into the larger paper we are working on. Basically:

This observation has multiple implications. One possibility that each fibril is a separate structure moving in a unique direction. Some are moving upwards and thus absorb in the red wing relative to the image plane while others are moving downwards relative to the image plane and thus absorb in the blue wing. If we observe more red fibrils than blue fibrils, this implies that there must be a preferred direction of motion. This goes in contrast to the flux tube model where the plasma motion does not necessarily have to conform to a specific direction and should be rather random.

It is possible that we are not observing in wavelengths at equal distances from the main line. We should be looking at +/- 1.1 angstroms from the center H-Alpha line, but if the whole wavelength curve has been shifted in a certain direction left of right, we might need to re-evaluate where on the curve we should observe in order to get data at equal distances from the H-Alpha main line.

Kevin Reardon proposed that while we might observe a structure absorbing in a wavelength shifted rather far from the H-Alpha main line so that its Doppler velocity must end up to be around 100 km/s. If we look for the same structure with the same velocity absorbing at an appropriate wavelength in Ca II, we might not find it. Such an conundrum might be explained by the fact that hydrogen atoms are much lighter than calcium atoms and thus much easily bothered by thermal heating effects. Nevertheless, this proposed observation is interesting and it is difficult to say whether it contradicts either proposed model or not. Perhaps it supports the idea of apparent motion for an actual plasmatic standing wave must absorb in all possible Doppler-shifted wavelengths as appropriate for its velocity. Apparent motion could potentially resolve this problem.

-Future plans are to publish a paper detailing our findings. This is important to complete before IRIS gets some data going as Phil predicts that will result in a torrent of papers!

-We are still working on the tubes vs sheets problem, but we can still publish a paper even if we do not actively disprove the one or the other! The chromosphere is a very much confusing and mysterious place and we want to get out any information we can regarding its exact nature! As Phil says: You do not have to be insane to study the chromosphere, but it helps.

-We might work on studying the velocities of these fibrils by looking at the wavelength scans and studying the wavelength profiles of these bad boys. We can see if they are shifted to the right or left (redshifted or blueshifted) and by how much. Therefore, we can determine how fast these are moving and whether the standing wave idea is thus possible. If they are moving too fast and we are not seeing otherwise evidence for supersonic motion, there is going to be a problem!

-We might need to make use of the wavelength scans even if their quality is not too great.

-We also might need to use some extra data from Kevin different from the time series. It might be a good idea to look at movies of the region in different wavelengths spanning from the main line!

Went out to dinner with Phil and Kevin. Phil is currently working on a computer modeling program to model curtains and hopefully we will be able to apply it to the data and compare the program to what we are seeing. We could get a qualitative answer regarding whether the super-fast phenomena could be an optical manifestation of sheets frolicking!

Here is a brief manifesto of the sheet idea:

Apparent motion might be suitable to describe what we are seeing. Rather than having a single connected flux tube of plasma, we might have a slightly decoupled rotating sheet structure with different components fluctuating in different directions and absorbing various wavelengths. Different components of the sheet would move with different speeds and in different directions (perhaps there is a preferred general direction to explain the abundance of red apparent fibrils). Rather than being composed of multiple standing wave flux tubes, the effects might be optical manifestations of the fluctuations of different components of a plasma sheet. Apparent shooting tubes of plasma are actually edges of a moving plasma sheet.

Here is a brief summary I wrote earlier of the Tubes vs Sheets debate:

Flux Tube Picture
Basic Claims

-Type II spicules are plasma propagating through a tube of flux from photosphere to corona

-Motion includes field-aligned flows, torsional motion, and transverse swaying

Supporting Evidence

-Spicules of type II certainly appear tube or straw-like in nature

-Type I spicules are compatible with field-aligned flows (Hansteen and colleagues)

Unresolved Issues

-Model of tubes generally ignore 'weak' solutions to MHD equations and the resultant tangential discontinuities that can result in sheet structures

-Wave reflection or highly oblique waves are required to account for observed very high phase speeds

-Generally, there is lack of evidence for (1) steep thermal gradients at transition region to ensure wave reflection, and (2) for oblique waves.

Plasma Sheet Picture
Basic Claims

-Many, if not a majority, of the spicules we are observing are actually optical manifestations of plasma sheets moving around like partially opaque (lace) curtains in the wind

-The observed motions appear fast because of optical superposition effects. The question of plasma acceleration is neither required nor rejected.

Supporting Evidence

-The equations of MHD have weak solutions which result in tangential discontinuities that can in principle produce sheets of plasma

-Sheets might more readily explain the high aspect ratio (length/radius) and collective behavior (movies) seen in many fibril groups

-They appear the only reasonable explanation compatible with the data we have analyzed (Judge et al. 2012)

-Occam's Razor: is this picture then the simplest compatible with the data?

Unresolved Issues

-Detecting solid evidence of sheets in the chromosphere (stereoscopy not possible)

-Can tangential discontinuities produce sheets with the right characteristic scales an behavior?

-Proportions of tubes compared to sheets

A few notes from Kevin:

Discussions with Phil and Isabel - 15 July 2013

Talked with Isabel about analysis of data:

We need to understand possible sources of extra absorption in H-alpha and Ca II 8542 wings.

-- thermal broadening: would imply symmetric features in both wings; but Isabel finds very different occurrence rates for the red and blue wings. Nearly simultaneous red and blue wing images (delta-t = 1 second) show non-coincident structures.

-- Doppler shifts: would explain wing differences, but would naively imply similar absorption features at a _greater_ wavelength offset in the Ca II 8542 line than in H-alpha. This does not appear to be the case. Could explain red/blue asymmetry through a supposed magnetic field configuration.

-- time-varying path lengths through an over-dense "curtain" : might explain "Doppler discrepancy" between H-alpha and Ca II line wavelengths where these structures appear. Not sure why this would produce the observed differences between the red and blue wings. Also, we need to think of mechanisms that could cause the "curtains" to have a higher density than surrounding plasma.

-- density/opacity enhancement : but little to no propagation is seen.

-- line formation/atomic level population : hydrogen might be more sensitive to high temperatures to populate the atomic levels.

-- some evil combination of the above!

Thing to look at:

-----------------

1) relative location of footpoints of blue and red fibrils: our interpretation might depend on whether these two are nearly co-spatial or not.

2) distribution of line widths in and around the wing fibrils: are fibrils embedded in regions of broadened profiles? Are we seeing the fast, narrow fibrils as a perturbation on already broadened profiles? Can we get a rough calibration of the required bulk velocities needed to produce the observed intensity drop using the actual, local line profiles?

3) line asymmetries: lack of correspondence between red and blue wings indicates some level of asymmetry, but what is overall distribution?

4) wavelength dependence of fibril appearance. Could difference in red and blue wing structures be due to a (strong) wavelength dependence of fibril characteristics? Can we find two wavelengths in the wings where the structures are statistically similar? This is perhaps related to the asymmetry measure above. We may not have a fine enough sampling in wavelength to fully resolve this question.

5) What are the possible line-of-sight inclination angles, lengths, and velocities of fibrils that would be consistent with the red and blue wing fibril characteristics if we assume their appearance is due to Doppler shifts?

6) Co-align AIA images (304, 171) to get an idea of the overlying structures. Can we get any idea of these sheets continuation into the corona?

Tasks:
Kevin:

-- will produce co-aligned maps of line widths and asymmetries (addressing #2 and #3);

-- will make co-aligned AIA filtergram (#6);

Isabel:

-- #1 and #4?

-Tuesday and Wednesday

Worked on studying something that Kevin mentioned we might want to look into. What we investigated and the results are written below:

We observe a strong amount of spicules appearing in images taken at +/- .11 nanometers shifted from the H-Alpha main line (656.28 nm). This translates to the spicules having velocities with magnitude of about 50 km/s. If we wanted to observe the same spicules in Ca II light, taking into account their velocity, we would have to look at wavelength shifts of about +/- .143 nm from the main line of 854.2 nm.

I wrote a program to compare H-Alpha images taken at -.103 nanometers (in the blue wing) to Ca II images taken a -.136 nm (also in the blue wing). In order to ensure that both sets of images would be very close in time and working within the constraints of the wavelength scan data we had, I had to select such wavelengths which vary from the desired .11 and .143 wavelengths. Fortunately, it works out that .103 nm for H-Alpha and .136 for Ca II both correspond to approximately the same velocity of 47 km/s!

Each set of H-Alpha and Ca II images were taken within 7 seconds of each other and were co-aligned. Even though the quality of these images is not great (they were not reduced using either Speckle or MFBD), one can easily see that the super-fast phenomena observed in the H-Alpha images is not observed in the corresponding Ca II images.

Theoretical models of the Sun of course predict that, if an object is moving at a certain speed, it should absorb all possible Doppler shifted wavelengths. With these models, there is no valid reason for why we are not seeing the same spicules in Ca II as we are seeing in H-Alpha.

In reality, there might be a plausible explanation for what we are seeing. The ability for an atom to absorb incoming photons relates to the conditions of the plasma it is in as well as the properties of the atom itself. Atoms with electrons at the H-Alpha transition versus atoms with electrons at the Ca II transition H-Alpha have a better ability to absorb their respective photons. There is in general a higher population of hydrogen atoms than there are calcium atoms as well and due to this and the general nature of the H-Alpha transition (as well as the fact that hydrogen atoms are lighter and perhaps much more sensitive to changes in thermal conditions), absorption of Balmer photons happens much more frequently than the absorption of Ca II transition photons. In short, plasma eligible for the Balmer transition is far more opaque to appropriate incoming photons than is plasma eligible for the Ca II transition.

The above explanation is not a sure thing, but is indeed one possibility in understanding what we are observing in the chromosphere with this data. This explanation is valid for consideration upon the fact that it should be expected that what we actually observe might deviate from theoretical assumptions that do not yet realize the vast complexity of the corona.

-Thursday

Phil sent me a program earlier to model curtain-like structures. Allowed it to run several times; made a few movies from the program. I compared these videos to actual data of fibrils moving on the sun from a few of the time series. Qualitatively at least, they do look like they might be solar curtains!

Phil also sent me a program to model the wavelengths and redshifts from a place on an image. Going to investigate that some more and maybe determine the red and blue-shifts of different fibrils in order to find their velocities.

-Friday

Had a lecture regarding our grad school options, etc. We are going to have to work hard (get good GRE scores, recommendation letters, etc). Phil and I discussed the continuation of our project. We need to finish the paper! Write up the results we have and finish up some more analysis. We need to write the images we want to .eps files so they can be used in the Latec code.

-I made several images of the Speckle and MFBD comparisons to be used in our data section and an image of the one lone flux tube we discovered.

-We plan to include a section linking the chromosphere and its activity to the photosphere and corona. This will involve including images of the corona imposed upon the underlying chromosphere. Downloaded several images from VSO. Phil is working on putting them together, some color stuff as well.

-We hope to link flux tubes/ etc to coronal loops...

-Reading through the paper, deciding what we need to include, etc.

Week 8: July 22nd-28th.

-Monday

Read some work by Rouppe van der Voort and another paper by De Wijn which discussed essentially how the high-speed phenomena we are seeing is certainly comparable to Type II Spicules. Have copied my analysis below:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Several ideas and models have been postulated to describe the nature of these high-speed phenomena in the chromosphere. Perhaps most popular is the model proposed by De Pontieu et al (2012) that describes these phenomena as standing waves of plasma within magnetic flux tubes. This is backed up by Sekse et al (2013) as well as Okamoto et al (2011), where the different components of this propagative motion are outlined.

Rouppe van der Voort et al (2009) decided that Rapid Blue Excursions were a phenomena comparable to the mysterious high-speed Type II Spicules we are studying. This study discusses how both phenomena exhibit properties of high-speed and accelerated plasma as a central link to the connection between the two. Far more blue-shifted phenomena were observed than red-shifted phenomena. These two observations are in contrast to what we have observed ourselves/ We found a much higher population per image of red-shifted phenomena than blue-shifted phenomena and we could certainly not make the conclusion that -type II spicules only demonstrate upward flows-. We also did not observe such plasmatic accelerations, as seen earlier with the discussion of the subtraction of Ca II images from H-Alpha images.

Rouppe van der Voort et al also found that H-Alpha RBEs have higher Doppler velocities and widths than do Ca II RBEs, which corresponds to that observed with Type II spicules. This observation actually has been confirmed by us. Phenomena has been observed to absorb radiation from H-Alpha but not in Ca II with an appropriate corresponding Doppler wavelength shift. Rouppe van der Voort et al ascribe this to H-Alpha transition-enabled atoms having a far higher opacity to incoming radiation than Ca II transition-enabled atoms. This is a thought we had as well. In this sense, Type II spicules might share a similar property with RBEs, but we are not convinced that RBEs are a surefire model for Type II spicules as there are many aforementioned discrepancies.

On that note as well, we have observed many discrepancies regarding the flux-tube plasma standing wave model proposed by De Pontieu et al....

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Discussed more future plans with Phil. Add the coronal/chromosphere section. We are also going to start an analysis section based on comparing the different types of fibrils. We are going to try and get an account of how many are tube-like, how many are sheet-like.

-Tuesday

Had a session with information regarding taking the GRE, etc.

Finished up an analysis paper regarding the second counting project described earlier. What I did was basically break the red and blue timeseries into 25 square sections and play those sections like movies: counting the total number of fibrils that appeared in each section and making note of those that really looked like snaking flux tubes and which ones looked like they could be an optical phenomenon.

In order to qualify as a snaking flux tube, the fibril must have had a transverse motion and have the appearance of plasma moving within it. In order to qualify as a curtain/sheet structure, the fibril must appear and disappear in relatively the same location and shimmer in a way- blink fast and come and go. With multiple of these, one might even think that they look like a rippled curtain being shaken out!

I ended up finding, on average, many more structures that qualified as sheets than those that qualified as flux tubes. When I showed my work to Phil, he noticed that many of those that I saw to be flux tubes were actually matter from the chromosphere raining down! So the flux tube number should actually be a bit lower than what I actually recorded.

We are now working on making gifs and mpeg movies that demonstrate what we see as curtains rippling in the wind. One effect of my counting project was to allow me to investigate the data more thoroughly and Phil and I were able to detect some solid examples of our sheet phenomenon idea. We were also able to find things that DID indeed resemble De Pontieu et al flux tubes, but they were NOT AS COMMON as the sheet-like structures!!!!

We are using image2movie to make these movies. The ones that come out are rather bad quality- one can hardly see anything! I need to figure out how to put in a color scale or something. One cannot also make small sections of frames as movies, as far as I have found out...

The paper is coming along rather well. We are working on the corona, chromosphere comparison and studying the nature of the fibrils!

-Wednesday and Thursday

-Worked more on making movies- have completed two rather good ones which demonstrate the flux tube phenomena and the sheet phenomena respectfully

-Movies can be made in small segments and I worked to adjust the color table so that the phenomena can be easily discerned.

getindex, 'tbmh', r,red

mapmov, arr, index=r

arr=arr[300:600,300:600,*]

image2movie,bytscl(arr,min=0.3,max=1.5), movie_name='sheet_example2_blu.mpg',movie_dir='.',table=1

This will produce a movie over that small area segment using the blue and white color table.

-Discussed more of the paper with Phil. He showed me the section where he is going to include some connections between the chromosphere and the corona/transition region.

-Paper is going to include: introduction to problem; discussion of issues at hand; previous results/ideas; new results and observations; connections; and implications.

Week 9: July 29th-August 4th

-Monday and Tuesday

Completed a few more tasks for the paper at hand!

-Analyzed the spectra of a red fibril in the wavelength scans and studied the occurrence of fibrils in the Ha, Ca wavelength scans. Quality is not great, but you can indeed make out a few of them.

-Put the earlier analysis of the occurrence of sheet-like structures vs tube structures done last week to good use. Made note of the percentages of tubes/sheets found out of the total number for the red and blue timeseries.

-Read through the paper, made a few more images that we needed to include!

-Worked on the REU presentation for next week. Need to go over with Phil the rest of the stuff that needs to be put in.

-Wednesday and Thursday

Read the latest paper by Rouppe Van der Voort, Sekse, and De Pontieu discussing a new observation comparing these Type II Spicules to RREs and RBEs. I had several comments on this and I have reproduced the main argument below. The entire discussion I wrote is included in the links at the bottom of this whole log.

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here is where the response to the Sekse et al 2013 paper comes in

Demonstrating this is evident in a 2013 paper published by Sekse et al. where a third type of motion of the Type II Spicules is explored: torsional motion. Rouppe Van der Voort et al in 2009 explored the comparison of this high-speed phenomena to RBEs. Here, the RRE and RBE properties of the spicules are explored in depth and the torsional rotational properties of these spicules is described. This paper may be seen as a small example embodying our reservations regarding the flux tube model and its hold on the solar physics community. Our response to this paper has three components of its own.

It appears that the scientists working on this project began with the assumption that these Type II Spicules will have properties comparable to RBEs and RREs. A detection routine designed for finding RREs and RBEs was used to analyze the data. It is fine to make an assumption, but the theoretical rootings of said assumption were never discussed. As with the 2009 paper discussing RBE, Type II Spicule correspondence, the connections between the two phenomena were purely observational. Furthermore, it is understandable that one might find such a connection between two phenomena, especially if the whole game is rigged towards making such a connection!

Red vs Blue

There was some broken symmetry described within this paper, namely that RRE components had a lower average Doppler width than RBEs and the number density of RREs compared to RBEs varies around certain regions of the Sun observed. The reason for this broken symmetry is explored by invoking different types of motion in the flux tube spicules over different areas of the Sun. We failed to understand, from the results of this paper, the exact equations and physics that results in this motion. Results were certainly descriptive and comprehensive. However, it did seem at times that some -explaining away- was occurring as the theoretical groundings for these very complicated motions and the equations of magnetohydrodynamics that might produce them were never explored! The flux tube model implies a certain randomness from fibril to fibril. Sekse et al implied that there was a systematic difference between RRE comparable phenomena and RBE phenomena. We have similarly observed a red and blue wing discrepancy (red wing fibrils are more elongated than blue ones). Unfortunately, the question still remains of why such a red and blue discrepancy and, most importantly, does it reject or confirm the flux tube model. We gathered possible reasons for such a discrepancy in terms of complex motion, but we failed to see an analysis of the implications for this discrepancy in terms of disproving or proving the model. It appears that the flux tube model has been taken for granted and results are fit into the model! As far as we can see, the flux tube model implies randomness and an equal distribution of RBE-like phenomena and RRE-like phenomena. The possibly contrary implications were ignored all together in favor of -making things fit-. Sekse et al mention that there must be more plasma upflows than downflows. The reasons for this (in terms of the model- why must this be so?) are not clearly presented.

Finally, what never was explored was why is it better to invoke more and more complicated motions to explain this phenomena? Again, going back to Occams Razor, why is it better to introduce yet another component of motion and yet more limitations, considerations, qualifications to a model just to make it fit in with new observations. We failed to see, in this paper, the reason WHY the flux tube model is desirable (again, why not discuss its rootings in magnetohydrodynamics). We did not see any mention of why torsional motion HAD to be the reason for what we are seeing and why apparent motion could be completely ruled out. Why is it better to add multiple components of motion to a phenomenon where it could quite simply be explored as an optical manifestation and apparent motion!

What we are afraid is happening regarding the flux tube model is that it has been accepted with minimal reservations despite the fact that we have not seen very strong mention of its theoretical groundings. We are afraid that new observations and data are being fit into the model, where what should be happening is the model being revised in light of new observations and data. We are afraid that our sheet model is being rejected out of convenience despite its validity in magnetohydrodynamics. We want open scientific dialogue and to further discovery and that cannot happen provided that other scientists are not open to discussing alternative possibilities. We want answers to the questions we have ourselves posed, and, perhaps most importantly, models and claims to be rooted in theoretical solar physics. Otherwise, science deviates from the scientific method and simply becomes description.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Made several more movies, which will be included in the links. Worked on the final presentation; added images, movies, and some textual analysis.

Discussed conclusions of this project and we have decided to add in a few analyses of fibrils found in the wavelength scans. We have opened up several more questions: why the difference in Red and Blue, why did we not observe any of those flux tubes, can sheets and flux tubes coexist?

Maybe some of the fibril analysis will help us answer these questions?

-Friday

Worked on the program to map the spectra of fibrils in the wavelength scans. Made a few more movies and sorted everything that should be included in the paper. Finished some more images for the paper; made them better.

Phil and I discussed good science- following the scientific method, keeping things rooted in theoretical bases, drawing conclusions based upon the data (not shaping results to fit a model!), and not ignoring contradictory evidence! Research science gets frustrating, confusing, and requires someone dedicated to practicing good science. I think that this is what I want to do with my life.