15th of August 2018 |
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Studies of the Sun, part 3 |
With the launch of the Parker Solar Probe on the weekend,
today's ADAP looks back at
the history of solar research within CSIRO..
Monday's ADAP showed an antenna of the Culgoora radio-heliograph,
which was located on the site of the Australia Telescope Compact Array
near Narrabri in northern NSW.
The radio-heliograph was able to detect both senses of circular polarisation
of radio waves. In the image above,
taken from this 1970 video,
red corresponds to left-circular polarisation,
and cyan to right-circular polarisation, so that
areas with equal contributions from left- and right- circular polarisation
appear white in the image. In this flare, the points closer to the sun have
opposite polarisations, indicating the important role played by magnetic
fields in these events.
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