Cross-Calibrating Sunspot Magnetic Field Strength Measurements from the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope and the Dunn Solar Telescope

TL;DR

This study cross-calibrates sunspot magnetic field measurements from two solar telescopes, improving data consistency and accuracy by comparing infrared spectropolarimetric observations.

Contribution

It introduces a method to accurately compare and calibrate magnetic field data from different solar telescopes using concurrent observations.

Findings

Strong agreement between measurements from both instruments

Calibration reduces measurement discrepancies

Enhanced data reliability for solar magnetic field studies

Abstract

In this article we describe a recent effort to cross-calibrate data from an infrared detector at the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope and the Facility InfraRed Spectropolarimeter (FIRS) at the Dunn Solar Telescope. A synoptic observation program at the McMath-Pierce has measured umbral magnetic field strengths since 1998, and this data set has recently been compared with umbral magnetic field observations from SOHO MDI and SDO HMI. To further improve on the data from McMath-Pierce, we compared the data with measurements taken at the Dunn Solar Telescope with far greater spectral resolution than has been possible with space instrumentation. To minimise potential disruption to the study, concurrent umbral measurements were made so that the relationship between the two datasets can be most accurately characterised. We find that there is a strong agreement between the umbral magnetic field strengths recorded by each instrument, and we reduced the FIRS data in two different ways to successfully test this correlation further.