Head: P. Venkatakrishnan

Overview

Research activities of the observatory encompass study of solar activity and solar origin of space weather.

Research Programmes

Measurement of solar magnetic fields for studies of evolution of these magnetic fields in relation to solar eruptive phenomena like solar flares and coronal mass ejections; studies of the effects of solar activity on parameters of the solar oscillations; studies of solar phenomena at high angular resolution by the application of modern techniques like speckle interferometry and adaptive optics.

Facilities

Telescopes for solar observations, laboratories for developing state-of-the-art back-end instrumentation, archived data on solar activity and connectivity to main campus of PRL for using library and external archival facilities.

Ph.D. Courses Offered

Solar Physics (as part of Astronomy course)

Select List of Recent Publications

A. Ambastha, S. Basu and H. M. Antia, "Flare induced excitation of solar p-modes", Solar Physics, 218, 151 (2003)

Debi Prasad Choudhary and Sanjay Gosain, "Comparative study of LiNbO3 and servo controlled air gap Fabry-Perot etalons for solar application", Experimental Astronomy, 13, 153-158 (2003)

Sanjay Gosain and Debi Prasad Choudhary, "Simultaneous Stokes-V diagnostic of a sunspot using Mgb and Fe I lines", Solar Physics, 217, 119-132 (2003)

B. Ravindra and P. Venkatakrishnan, "On the correlation between the Helium II 304 network brightening and the photospheric magnetic field", Solar Physics, 214, 267 (2003)

B. Ravindra and P. Venkatakrishnan, "Structure and evolution of the transition region network observed in the He II 304", Solar Physics, 215, 239 (2003)

S. C. Tripathy, "Solar cycle changes in GONG and MDI data 1995-2002", Bull. Astron. Soc. India, 31, 153-158 (2003)

P. Venkatakrishnan, and B. Ravindra, "Relationship between CME velocity and active region magnetic energy", Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, 2181 (2003)

Nandita Srivastava and P. Venkatakrishnan, "Solar and interplanetary sources of major geomagnetic storms during 1996-2002", Journal of Geophysical Research, 109, A10, A10103 (2004)

B. Ravindra, P. Venkatakrishnan and Brajesh Kumar, "The pattern of moving magnetic inhomogenities in and around sunspots", Solar Physics, Nov (2004)

R. Sridharan, Nirvikar Dashora and P. Venkatakrishnan, "Estimation of Fried's parameter from long-exposure solar images", Solar Physics, 222, 35 (2004)

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