The Sun’s atmosphere is highly structured and dynamic, characterized by a continuous interplay between plasma and magnetic field. The magnetic field on the Sun plays a role in driving all processes visible in its atmosphere. It causes the activity cycle and the variability of the solar luminosity and it produces most of the spectacular visible phenomena, like sunspots, prominences, flares and coronal mass ejections.

The researchers at INAF-OAR focus their attention on the lower layers of the Sun (photosphere and chromosphere), where most of these phenomena originate, using observations from state-of-the-art space-based and ground-based telescopes.

The Sun provides most of Earth’s energy with the possibility to affect Earth’s atmosphere and climate. Among the possible mechanisms proposed for solar influence on climate, the variability of the Sun’s radiative energy flux is the most prominent one.

The researchers at the INAF-OAR have been dedicated to solar variability from the very beginning, accumulating over a decade of internationally recognized expertise in this field using historical and modern full disk data.

The group is also involved in developing scientific instruments for the next generation of Solar telescopes and refurbishing some preexisting ones like IBIS.

OUR RESEARCH ACTIVITY

• Processes

  • Plasma-magnetic field interplay in the solar atmosphere

  • Solar activity, space weather and space climate

• Instruments
  • IBIS2.0
  • Rome/PSPT
• Observations

  • Historical solar data

  • Modern solar data

• Projects

  • European Solar Telescope (EST)
  • OSCARS

OUR TEAM

Ilaria Ermolli (Researcher), Fabrizio Giorgi (Observations and data analysis), Mariarita Murabito (Researcher), Kamal Sant (Instrument development, Post-doc)

Publications