• cooperation:
  • A.Kucera and J.Rybak, Astronomical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Tatranska Lomnica, SK.
  • A new cooperation with SUMER (see below) includes W.Curdt and U.Schühle from the Max-Planck-Institut für Aeronomie.
  • Due to a new cooperation between Austria and Slovakia A.Hanslmeier and students of him from the Institute of Geophysics, Astrophysics and Meteorology at the University of Graz are also reducing data from our VTT observations. A.Hanslmeier also took part in observations at the VTT within this project in 1999.
  • In a recent work in addition A.Gadun from Kiev, Ukraine, was included in the cooperation of interpretation if data and planning of observations. Unfortunately he deceased before the paper was printed. We keep him in our mind and honor him our joint paper in A&A 363, 289 (2000).

• support:
  • The project was included in a bi-lateral cooperation of Germany and Slovakia (money for travelling and visits and some equipment) 1995 until 1998.
  • It is now supported by the Astronomical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences at Tatranska Lomnica (SK) and the KIS.
  • Further support comes from the other partners mentioned.
  • Starting in 2001 we have again a support from the German Research Society (DFG) for travelling of A.Kucera and J.Rybak to Germany and Tenerife for the next two years. First joint data reductions at Freiburg were performed in October and November 2001, that was continued in summer and winter 2002.- A new support for several years was granted by the DFG in 2006: This time the observations will be applied at the OPTICON and only trips to Freiburg by the DFG.

• background: The joint cooperation started during my supervision of A.Kucera, when he was as a post-doc at the KIS in 1992/93. The main interest at that time were high resolved spectra of the solar photosphere in quiet and active regions.

• status:
  • The project concentrated in the beginning on observations with the VTT.
  • Further observations for this project were performed in September 1996 using the VTT at Tenerife. Using UV spectral line data obtained in parallel observations with SUMER Project 8.1.2.66 on the satellite SOHO we hope to be able to extend the analysis of the dynamics into the chromosphere.
  • Since the reduction of the SUMER data themselves gave very interesting results, a JOP (Joint Operations Programme) was submitted. The text of our JOP078 is available at the SOHO server. The observations were performed including the new spacecraft TRACE on May 14, 1998. Data from this campaign were transferred to the KIS at Freiburg and reduced, e.g. in a special programme supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) devoted to Jan Rybak from October 15 until December 13,1998. He has prepared a movie of a spectral line taken with SUMER (MPG format, 673 kB). This series stems from the O I spectral line at 102.74 nm, the spectral width (horizontal) covers 0.15 nm, the height of the spectrum (vertical) covers about 85 arcseconds. All the images are corrected for dark current, flat fielded, destretched and absolute calibrated. The total duration of the available data is 3.79 hours, but some images are missing in this movie.
  • A similar JOP was performed May 7 and 8, 1999 with parallel observations of Ca II images at the VTT and further spectra were obtained with the VTT Echelle spectrograph and TESOS (Telecentric Etalon SOlar Spectrometer) end of May begin of June 1999.
  • Further observations were performed end of April/begin of May 2000 using the adaptive optics of the NSO/USA at the VTT to gain the highest possible resolution. The next observing run was only possible in April 2002 - it was of minimum of usage due to a lot of bad weather (e.g. snow for a week). Nevertheless an important paper was started.
  • A staff report about the first reductions - mainly performed by J.Rybak - was given in the KIS January 29, 2002. - Attention: Since the data were converted from PowerPoint XP to HTML/XML you will need a modern browser to read it - e.g. Internet Explorer 5 or 6 or Netscape 6 or 6.2...
  • A new attempt was started in July 2004, with TRACE and CDS from space and DOT and VTT from the ground. Several new observers from Slovakia appeared: J.Koza, P.Gömöry and F.Tomasz. Among the details rediced first were observations of a M5.4 flare taken July 13, 2004. A poster was e.g. shown at the SoHO17 conference in May 2006 and the contents are prepared for the proceedings. - The poster (PDF format, 2.5 MB) - can be seen here. More reductions were performed e.g. during stays within a new DFG grant by A.Kucera at the KIS in August 2006 and February/March 2006. In November 2006 observations to detect shocks in the solar atmosphere were performed using the VTT with the Echelle spectrometer and the TESOS Fabry-Perot spectrometer. The reductions started in February and March 2007 - mainly by Jan Rybak at the KIS.

  • publications:
    • First results were published in several conference proceedings but also in A&A 298, 917-922 (1995) - see the abstracts and keywords for some details.
    • A second refereed paper was published including the coauthor H.Balthasar from the AIP, Potsdam, about heights of formation of photospheric Fe I lines: A&A 332, 1069-1074 (1998) - look here for the abstracts and keywords.
    • Our paper from the 1st ASPE (Advances in Solar Physics Euroconferences) presented October 4, 1996 at Puerto de la Cruz is given here (PS file, 356 kB). It is published in the Astronomical Society of the Pacific conference series volume 118 pages 322 to 325 of the 1st ASPE (B. Schmieder, J.-C. del Toro Iniesta and M. Vazquez are the editors) - the copyrights are with the ASP.
    • A part of the reductions of SUMER spectra was presented by J. Rybak at the 5th SOHO workshop at Oslo in June 1997. The final paper appeared in the proceedings (PS file, 1.9 MB) edited by A. Wilson (ESA-SP 404, 307-312 (1997)).
    • Another paper was published in the proceedings of the 2nd ASPE, edited by C.E.Alissandrakis and B.Schmieder.
    • During the 3rd ASPE end of September 1998 the status of the project was shown in a poster, which is published in the JOSO Annual Report 1998.
    • Further results were presented at
      • the 8th SOHO meeting, Paris, in June 1999,
      • at the Kanzelhöhe summerschool in September 1999,
      • at the Florence meeting September 1999.
    • A refereed paper with A.Hanslmeier and his student B.Neunteufel was published in A&A, another paper with A.Gadun among the coauthors was printed in A&A 363, 289-294 (2000).
    • Several reports were given during the THEMIS workshop in Rome in March 2001 and were published in the proceedings of that meeting (in the journal IL NUOVO CIMENTO) in 2002.
    • A paper about indications of shock detection in the granulation was recently published in ASTRON.ASTROPHYS. 420, 1141 (2004).

  • special remark concerning the data policy: All the digital and analog data from this joint project obtained 1992 until 2004 and their present storage places are documented for internal information and for interested future users.

• (4) Title: Twodimensional velocity and magnetic fields
  • cooperation: H.Schleicher, KIS, and H.Balthasar, Astronomisches Institut Potsdam (AIP)

  • support: KIS-AIP project

  • background: Velocity fields in 557.6 nm are observed using Fabry-Perot-Interferometers at the VTT. The plan is to investigate the interaction of velocity fields e.g. of the supergranulation with oscillations. We also investigated velocity fields in active regions and attempt to observe magnetic fields using magnetic split lines.

  • status: The analysis of two series did not show any relation between the network and the 5 min-oscillations. In autumn 1997 first data were obtained using the new TESOS/FPI within the VTT. Unfortunately bad seeing conditions did not allow to measure velocity fields with the spatial resolution we want to have. Nevertheless some of these data have been reduced using the standard reduction programs for the TESOS data available in the KIS and some special programs developed by myself.

    A new observing run was performed end of August / begin of September 1998, again using the TESOS/FPI. The spectral lines used were again Fe 557.6 nm and for a first time Fe 630.25 nm. Unfortunately bad seeing conditions and technical problems did not allow to obtain useful data. Nevertheless these data are also used to check the reduction procedures. Further observations were performed in 1999: End of July the seeing was quite bad and no useful data could be obtained. End of August/begin of September 1999 we obtained several series with the spectral lines Fe 557.61 nm (non-split) and Cr 578.2 nm (strong splitting) in parallel. Within a further observing run begin of June 2000 due to instrumental problems and bad weather again no usefull data could be obtained. We plan to concentrate on further light-bridge studies in 2001/03. Another observing run in November/December 2002 was rather disappointing: Either the TESOS system was not yet running (a PLUTO PC had to be reconfigurated due to a new harddisk) or the wind did not blow from a nice direction and avoided any operation of the AO due to strange shaking of the coelostat/tower. Only a short sequence of data from November 27, 2002 is used to test the complete TESOS software for merging data (from the two CCDs) and data reduction.

    In 2003 we used the Mercury transit to collect data to determine the scattered light in TESOS and some weeks later continued the observations again with Fe 557.6 nm and Cr 578.2 nm. For these observations the KAOS was in operation during all the data collections.

  • supporting data: For the sunspot group 8323 observed Spetember 2, 1998 we collect data from other sources. E.g. the following H alpha images from 'negatives' of the Kanzelhöhe obtained from A. Schroll recently:
    • H alpha KH 980902_0723 (GIF format, 93 kB)
    • H alpha KH 980902_0749 (GIF format, 96 kB)
    • H alpha KH 980902_0801 (GIF format, 97 kB)
    • H alpha KH 980902_0831 (GIF format, 92 kB)
    • H alpha KH 980902_0905 (GIF format, 92 kB)
    • H alpha KH 980902_0921 (GIF format, 92 kB)
    • all subimages of spotgroup 8323 at the times given above from left to right converted to 'positives' and with a high contrast (JPG format, 7 kB)

  • publications: Some of the series observed in 1996 were devoted to the rapid development of small sunspot groups. H.Balthasar could add the results obtained from these data to his investigation of sunspot velocity fields. The fourth co-author of a first refereed paper is V. Martinez Pillet from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. The publication in SOLAR PHYSICS was printed in volume 182, pages 65 to 72 (1998) - for more details, abstract etc. see the 68th publication in the list of my refereed publications. A new report about velocity fields in light-bridges was given during the AG meeting at Göttingen in September 1999. A preliminary velocity field of a sunspot crossing the solar disk center on August 31, 1999 was given on the main KIS webpage in November 1999 and a more detailed report in the in December 2002. A report about TESOS and the light-bridges was given at the 1st French-Chinese solar meeting at Xi'an in November 1999 and printed in its proceedings (see the publication lists). Another - refereed publication - was submitted March 7, 2003 to SOLAR PHYSICS and finally accepted April 7, 2003. It appeared already in the list of electronic papers of SOLAR PHYSICS (unproofread !).

• (5) Title: Proper motion of pores and sunspots in active regions
  • cooperation: Roman Brajsa from the Hvar observatory, Zagreb, Croatia, and his colleagues observing at Hvar. - The colleagues from Tatranska Lomnica, Slovakia, have joined this project. They deliver high precision positions of sunspots.

  • support: At present, both institutes, the Hvar Observatory and the KIS, support the project. - A joint project to combine this project with the observations of sunspots at Tatranska Lomnica is in a testing phase (see project 1 and 'status', below).

  • background: The solar telescope at the Hvar observatory is equipped with instruments from the czech observatory Ondrejov. Recently a video recording system based on a S-VHS-video recorder and a frame grabbing system for digitization was installed. The idea was to test the equipment for possible use within the investigation of proper motion of different structures on the sun. A problem was that the positions grabbed are only available in good position data near the solar limb. To overcome this, position data - e.g. from Tatranska Lomnica (see above) - shall be used.

  • status: A first observing run of R.Brajsa and H.Wöhl with support by N.Novak from the Hvar observatory was performed October 7 until October 11, 1999. Some preliminary images of a small sunspot group (called A) observed October 7, 1999 are available:
    • image of group A, digitized at Hvar (640 * 409 pixels, GIF format, 149 kB)
    • image of group A, digitized at Freiburg (720 * 576 pixels, GIF format, 290 kB)
    • image of group A, digitized at Freiburg (720 * 576 pixels, JPEG format, 275 kB)

    Further data were collected in 2001 and 2002 by V.Ruzdjak and also by myself in September/October 2002. Shown are two examples taken May 8, 2001 at Hvar and digitized September 5, 2001 at Freiburg. - Within the images are given: on top the 'Hvar-number' given to this group, in the left above the bottom line the directions on the sun (S=south, W=west, and a "L" for the symbol of the corner) and in the bottom line the date in YEAR-MONTH-DAY - format, the observing place ('HVAR') and the time in UT. After 'UT' the image number within the second shown is given (30 images per second).

    • image of group 2, digitized at Freiburg (720 * 576 pixels, JPEG format, 262 kB)
    • image of group 3, digitized at Freiburg (720 * 576 pixels, JPEG format, 235 kB)

  • In November 2001 several 100 images from May 2001 were grabbed and prepared for a comparison with sunspot position data from Tatranska Lomnica and other sources. Starting March 4, 2002, Martin Kreuzer, a research student at the KIS, began to grab more images from the S-VHS movies recorded at Hvar in summer 2001. This work was continued by D.Sudar from Zagreb during a stay at the KIS in April/May 2002 and by D.Ruzdjak in winter 2002. For a preliminary report given in October 2002 at the VIth Hvar Astrophys.Coll. a dozen images taken June 7-9, 2001 were composed to show the developments of NOAA groups 9487 and 9489 within about 55 hours (JPG-format, 193 kB). The list of the exact dates is given here in a text file (ASCII-format, 217 Byte)

  • When I started to dissolve the old solar image archieve of the former "Fraunhofer-Institut' from the old solar observatory on the Schauinsland mountain near Freiburg, I found that there might be series of useful data available from this source. A new digitizer is used in the KIS photo laboratory to digitize these images. First results can be seen in the KIS-www-pages: goto 'public relations' and then to 'history of the KIS'...see the tables available there. - Within the last years most of the glass plates of integral images and H alpha and Ca II K3 images were checked.

  • publications:A version of my talk (PPT/HTML file, 1 MB) presented at the VIth HVAR ASTROPHYSICAL COLLOQUIUM October 7, 2002 is given here and was be published in the HVAR OBSERVATORY BULLETIN. The preliminary version for the publication is here (PS-file, 640 kB)

• (6) Title: Molecular spectral lines of sunspot umbrae
  • cooperation: Roman Brajsa from the Hvar Observatory, Zagreb, D.Kotnik-Karuza and R.Jurdana-Sepic from the University of Rijeka, Croatia.

  • support: At present, both institutes, the Hvar Observatory and the KIS, support the project.

  • background: Molecular spectral lines in solar and stellar spectra have recently again gained interest: The topic 'molecules in sunspots' was the core of my thesis more than three decades ago and I have not worked on this topic since about two decades. Now it attracts also my interest again, since new techniques for obtaining umbral spectra of high dynamics and contrast are available - CCD cameras and image stabilization by correlation trackers.

  • status: We have started to investigate the possibility to obtain highly resolved spectra of sunspot umbrae in spectral regions with a lot of molecular spectral lines using CCD cameras at the Echelle spectrograph of the Vacuum Tower Telescope (VTT) on Tenerife/Spain. A first observing run of R.Brajsa and H.Wöhl was performed October 31 until November 3, 2001: Spectra of the umbrae of groups #9682 and #9684 could be collected. Dedicated reduction programs have been developed to average and compose longer spectral scans from the short CCD spectra. Further data could be collected in April 2002. These were delivered on CD-ROM to the croatian colleagues.
    • A new composed umbral spectrum constructed of many CCD exposures taken October 31, 2001 is compared with an old umbral spectrum (USpA-atlas) and a photospheric spectrum (Liege-atlas) near 525 nm (JPEG format, 95 kB)
    • A new composed umbral spectrum constructed of many CCD exposures taken November 2, 2001 is compared with an old umbral spectrum (USpA-atlas) and a photospheric spectrum (Liege-atlas) near 525 nm (JPEG format, 95 kB)

  • publications:-

If you want to know more about these projects, just ask me. You may use the e-mail connection below !