Observational Plasma Astrophysics Five Years Of Yohkoh And Beyond

Since its launch in 1991, the Yohkoh satellite has been returning unprecedented observations of solar flares and the dynamic solar corona. This book is a collection of papers presented at a meeting held in: Yoyogi, Tokyo, on the occasion of Yohkoh's fifth anniversary of operation. The papers constitute a summary of observations and results over the five years, including contributions based on data from Yohkoh's hard and soft X-ray telescopes and its spectrometer experiments. The five years of data, covering approximately one-half of a solar cycle, reveal a fresh perspective on solar science, with a new picture of solar flares and the active Sun emerging. Also, for the first time there are extensive results from Yohkoh observations of the Sun during the solar minimum period. This wide-ranging volume will be of interest to workers in solar physics and X-ray astronomy. It also contains material appropriate for supplemental reading for graduate students in solar physics.

Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, held in Çesme, Turkey, from August 31 - September 10, 1998

This two-part book is devoted to classic fundamentals and current practices and perspectives of modern plasma astrophysics. This second part discusses the physics of magnetic reconnection and flares of electromagnetic origin in space plasmas in the solar system, single and double stars, relativistic objects, accretion disks and their coronae. More than 25% of the text is updated from the first edition, included the additions of new figures, equations and entire sections on topics such as topological triggers for solar flares and the magnetospheric physics problem. This book is aimed at professional researchers in astrophysics, but it will also be useful to graduate students in space sciences, geophysics, applied physics and mathematics, especially those seeking a unified view of plasma physics and fluid mechanics.

A thorough introduction to solar physics based on recent spacecraft observations. The author introduces the solar corona and sets it in the context of basic plasma physics before moving on to discuss plasma instabilities and plasma heating processes. The latest results on coronal heating and radiation are presented. Spectacular phenomena such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections are described in detail, together with their potential effects on the Earth.

Significant advances have been made recently in both the theoretical understanding and observation of small-scale turbulence in different layers of the Sun, and in the instabilities that give rise to them. The general development of solar physics, however, has led to such a degree of specialization as to hinder interaction between workers in the field. This book therefore presents studies of different layers and regions of the Sun, but from the same aspect, concentrating on the study of small-scale motions. The main emphasis is on the common theoretical roots of these phenomena, but the book also contains an extensive treatment of the observational aspects.

Proceedings of the Joint Discussion-17 at the 23rd IAU General Assembly, organised by the Commission 41, held in Kyoto, Japan, August 25-26, 1997

The multielement systems have been widely used in many fields of astron omy and radio science in the last decades. This is caused by the increasing demands on the resolution and sensitivity of such systems over the wide range of the electromagnetic wavelengths, from gamma up to radio. The ground-based optical and radio interferometers, gamma-ray and X-ray or bital telescopes, antenna arrays of radio telescopes and also some other radio devices belong to scientific instruments using multielement systems. There fore, the current problems of the optimal construction of such systems, or precisely, those of searching for the best arrangement of the elements in them, were formulated. A rather large number of scientific papers, including those of the authors, is devoted to these problems, and we believe that the time has come to integrate the basic results of the papers into the mono graph. The offered book consists of three parts. The first part is concerned with the optimal synthesis of optical and radio interferometers of various types and purposes; the synthesis of non-equidistant antenna arrays is con sidered in the second part; and the methods for the construction of coded masks for X-ray and gamma-ray orbital telescopes are expounded in the third one. Since in the text combinatorial constructions which are little known to astronomers are used, the necessary information is given in the appendices. Various tables containing the parameters of the systems consid ered are also represented.

Space exploration and advanced astronomy have dramatically expanded our knowledge of outer space and made it possible to study the indepth mechanisms underlying various natural phenomena caused by complex interaction of physical-chemical and dynamical processes in the universe. Huge breakthroughs in astrophysics and the planetary s- ences have led to increasingly complicated models of such media as giant molecular clouds giving birth to stars, protoplanetary accretion disks associated with the solar system’s formation, planetary atmospheres and circumplanetary space. The creation of these models was promoted by the development of basic approaches in modern - chanics and physics paralleled by the great advancement in the computer sciences. As a result, numerous multidimensional non-stationary problems involving the analysis of evolutionary processes can be investigated using wide-range numerical experiments. Turbulence belongs to the most widespread and, at the same time, the most complicated natural phenomena, related to the origin and development of organized structures (- dies of different scale) at a definite flow regime of fluids in essentially non-linear - drodynamic systems. This is also one of the most complex and intriguing sections of the mechanics of fluids. The direct numerical modeling of turbulent flows encounters large mathematical difficulties, while the development of a general turbulence theory is hardly possible because of the complexity of interacting coherent structures. Three-dimensional non-steady motions arise in such a system under loss of la- nar flow stability defined by the critical value of the Reynolds number.