Image of the sun taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Credit: NASA
Using the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite, a team of scientists measured the shape of the Sun with unprecedented accuracy, finding that Sun’s oblate shape is remarkably constant and almost completely unaffected by the solar cycle variability seen on its surface.
The sun is nearly the roundest object ever measured. If scaled to the size of a beach ball, it would be so round that the difference between the widest and narrow diameters would be much less than the width of a human hair.
The sun rotates every 28 days, and because it doesn’t have a solid surface, it should be slightly flattened. This tiny flattening has been studied with many instruments for almost 50 years to learn about the sun’s rotation, especially the rotation below its surface, which we can’t see directly.
Now Jeff Kuhn and Isabelle Scholl (Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii at Manoa), Rock Bush (Stanford University), and Marcelo Emilio (Universidade Estadual de Ponta Grossa, Brazil) have used the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite to obtain what they believe is the definitive–and baffling–answer.
Because there is no atmosphere in space to distort the solar image, they were able to use HMI’s exquisite image sensitivity to measure the solar shape with unprecedented accuracy. The results indicate that if the Sun were shrunk to a ball one meter in diameter, its equatorial diameter would be only 17 millionths of a meter larger than the diameter through its North-South pole, which is its rotation axis.
They also found that the solar flattening is remarkably constant over time and too small to agree with that predicted from its surface rotation. This suggests that other subsurface forces, like solar magnetism or turbulence, may be a more powerful influence than expected.
Kuhn, the team leader and first author of an article published in Science Express, said, “For years we’ve believed our fluctuating measurements were telling us that the sun varies, but these new results say something different. While just about everything else in the sun changes along with its 11-year sunspot cycle, the shape doesn’t.”
Reference: “The Precise Solar Shape and Its Variability” by J. R. Kuhn, R. Bush, M. Emilio and I. F. Scholl, 16 August 2012, Science Express.
DOI: 10.1126/science.1223231
This work was supported by NASA grants to Stanford University and the University of Hawaii.
I wonder if the inclination of the Sun’s axis of rotation relative the SDO during time of observation was taken into account. Depending on what time of year the observations were made, this could substantially affect results.