Subterahertz Radius and Limb Brightening of the Sun Derived from SST and ALMA

TL;DR

This study measures the solar radius and limb brightening at multiple radio frequencies using SST and ALMA data, revealing frequency-dependent atmospheric features and comparing methods for accurate radius estimation.

Contribution

It introduces the first limb brightening estimates at 212 and 405 GHz and compares two radius measurement methods, recommending the inflection-point method for reliability.

Findings

Measured solar radii at four frequencies with high precision.

Estimated limb brightening ranges for each frequency.

Found the inflection-point method to be less affected by observational parameters.

Abstract

Measurements of the radius and limb brightening of the Sun provide important information about the solar atmosphere structure and temperature. The solar radius increases as the observation at radio frequency decreases, indicating that each emission originates higher in the atmosphere. Thus, different layers of the solar atmosphere can be probed by observing at multiple wavelengths. In this work, we determined the average radius and limb brightening at 100, 212, 230, and 405 GHz, using data from the Solar Submillimeter Telescope and ALMA's single-dish observations. For the first time, limb brightening values for frequencies of 212 and 405 GHz were estimated. At sub-THz frequencies, the observed limb brightening may affect the solar radius measurements. We use two different and well known approaches to determine the radius: the half-power method and the inflection-point method. We investigate how the antenna beam size and the limb brightening level, LB, can affect the radius measurements using both methods. Our results showed that the inflection-point method is the least affected by these parameters, and should thus be used for solar radius estimates at radio wavelengths. The measured average radii are 968"~$\pm$~3" (100 GHz), 963"~$\pm$~3" (212 GHz), 963"~$\pm$~2" (230 GHz), and 963"~$\pm$~5" (405 GHz). Finally, we used forward modeling to estimate the ranges of LB of the solar disk resulting in 5%-19% (100 GHz), 2%-12% (212 GHz), 6%-18% (230 GHz), and 3%-17% (405 GHz). Both radius and limb brightening estimates agree with previous measurements reported in the literature.