The study of photospheric "quiet" structures can have deep implications for a large variety of astrophysical topics, ranging from energy transport in astrophysical plasmas, to MHD problems in fluids with elevated Reynolds number.

The wealth of structures and scales visible in the quiet solar photosphere is well exemplified in this white light movie, obtained at the Dunn Solar Telescope at the NSO/Sacramento Peak on Oct. 16, 1996. Images were obtained with 8 ms exposure through with a wide-band filter (10 nm FWHM, at 5500 nm); field of view (FOV) is about 60 arcsec, and the movie spans about 50 min. The sequence has been filtered for 5-min oscillations.

Of course spectroscopic measurements of such small structures are far from trivial, especially owing to their rapid temporal evolution. We plan to exploit the unique characteristics of IBIS to obtain high resolution observations of convective (or otherwise) intensity and velocity fields, sampling several lines at different depths. The large FOV, combined with the spatial resolution, will permit studies of structures over scales that range from the intergranular to the supergranular.

Such observations will be used to investigate the spatio-temporal dynamics of the lower solar atmosphere, by studyng scaling laws of fluctuations, and by comparing them with models of turbulent cascades in the presence of coherent structures.

Click on image at right to load an animated GIF movie (N.B. 14 MB!) of the solar granulation, or click here for a smaller MPEG version.

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