Multimedia Gallery - Simulations of magnetic flux emergence, a driver of flares and coronal mass ejections in the sun.

June 29, 2015

Simulations of magnetic flux emergence, a driver of flares and coronal mass ejections in the sun.

Robert Stein used results of global solar dynamo simulations to determine spatially and temporally evolving bottom boundary conditions for a magneto-convection simulation of the top 15 percent of the solar convection zone (a slab of the sun's surface 48,000 km wide and 20,000 km deep). Magnetic flux emergence in forming solar active regions is the driver of flares and coronal mass ejections that produce the dangerous storms in Earth's space weather. The simulation ran on Pleiades at NASA's Advanced Supercomputing Division. Pat Moran, a visualization expert at NASA Ames, processed the output of these simulations through an advanced algorithm to produce spatially consistent, visually meaningful field lines by selecting for lines that ultimately end up connecting with a particular active region on the sun's surface.

Credit: Robert Stein, Michigan State University

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