On the Origin of Solar Faculae

Keller, C. U., M. Schüssler, A. Vögler, and V. Zakharov, On the Origin of Solar Faculae, ApJ, 607, L59-L62 (2004) (ADS)

The cartoon

(click on the image for a larger version)

Do the physical mechanisms of faculae have anything to do with emissions from solar flares? This cartoon illustrates one of the possible subtleties. The brightness of a facular element, part of the quiet Sun, has this simple explanation - Spruit's "hot wall" becomes visible because of 3D projection near the limb, as illustrated here. Something like this rough structure seems very likely to exist in active regions, where dynamics and contrast variations must be greater than those in the quiet Sun anyway. Let's think about this.

Date: 2020 June 22