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Featured Presentation

"Characterization of Small-scale Tornadoes on the Sun​"
(details below)

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Our guest presenter is Oana Vesa, PhD. She is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Solar Group at Stanford University whose research focuses on using solar Rossby Waves to probe the solar interior and investigate their connection to the solar dynamo. She earned a B.A. in Physics and Mathematics from Albion College and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from New Mexico State University. Her dissertation focused on characterizing the behavior of atmospheric gravity waves and swirling vortex flows throughout the solar atmosphere using high-resolution, multi-wavelength observations to unravel their diagnostic potential for probing hard-to-measure parameters of the lower solar atmosphere.

Here is more about her presentation:

Chromospheric swirls, or solar tornadoes, are small-scale vortex flows in the Sun’s outer atmosphere that help transfer energy and mass between its layers. Our analysis of 33 solar tornadoes using high-resolution data from the Dunn Solar Telescope shows they typically last around 8 minutes and are linked to bright points in the Sun’s lower layers. Observing one large swirl, we traced its connection to deeper atmospheric motions, revealing how these tornadoes are driven from the surface to higher atmospheric layers.