Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Science. 2014 Oct 17;346(6207):1255726. doi: 10.1126/science.1255726. Epub 2014 Oct 16.
The solar atmosphere was traditionally represented with a simple one-dimensional model. Over the past few decades, this paradigm shifted for the chromosphere and corona that constitute the outer atmosphere, which is now considered a dynamic structured envelope. Recent observations by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) reveal that it is difficult to determine what is up and down, even in the cool 6000-kelvin photosphere just above the solar surface: This region hosts pockets of hot plasma transiently heated to almost 100,000 kelvin. The energy to heat and accelerate the plasma requires a considerable fraction of the energy from flares, the largest solar disruptions. These IRIS observations not only confirm that the photosphere is more complex than conventionally thought, but also provide insight into the energy conversion in the process of magnetic reconnection.
传统上，太阳大气层是用简单的一维模型来表示的。在过去的几十年里，这种模式发生了转变，对于构成外大气层的色球层和日冕来说，现在被认为是一个动态的结构化包层。最近，界面区域成像分光仪（IRIS）的观测结果显示，即使在太阳表面上方的 6000 开尔文冷色球层，也很难确定上下方向：这个区域存在一些热点等离子体，它们会被暂时加热到近 10 万开尔文。加热和加速等离子体所需的能量，相当于耀斑（太阳最大的扰动）能量的很大一部分。这些 IRIS 观测结果不仅证实了色球层比传统观念认为的更为复杂，还为磁重联过程中的能量转换提供了新的认识。
