Time lapse movies of solar granulation evolution.

The movies show time lapse series of the evolution of the solar granulation, which represents the top of the Sun's convection zone. At the centers of granules hot solar gas rises and radiates its heat rapidly into space; the gas then is diverted horizontally, and sinks back into the Sun in the darker intergranular lanes. The sizes of the granules range from approx. 250 km (the limit set by the telescope and the Earth's atmosphere) to more than 2000 km, with an average diameter of 1300 km. Lifetimes of granules typically range from 8 to 15 minutes. Horizontal and vertical velocities of the gas motion are 1 to 2 km/s.

The series was observed with a fast frame selection system on June 5, 1993, at the SVST (La Palma) in cooperation with G. Scharmer (Stockholm) and G. W. Simon (Sunspot); N. Hoekzema (Utrecht), W. Mühlmann (Graz), and R. Shine (Palo Alto) were involved in the data analysis. Technical data: wavelength 468 ± 5 nm; exposure time 0.014 s; rms contrast (uncorrected) between 7 and 10.6 %. The images were registered, destretched, corrected for the telescope's point spread function, and subsonically filtered after interpolation to equal time steps. Both area and total time are indicated for each movie.