Title: 
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The evolution of the large scale solar magnetic fields

Lead Investigator:
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Peter R. Wilson

Team Members:
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Yan Li		     

Local Coordinator:
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Alan Title

Lead Programmer:
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Technical Summary:
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By studying the evolution of the polar magnetic fields, in particular the 

apparent motions and polarity distributions of magnetic features within these 

fields, we hope to contribute to an understanding of the solar dynamo 

processes. We will be particularly concerned to investigate the relation 

between the polar fields and the decay of the active region fields at lower 

latitudes.

Proposal Text:
=======================
We propose to use the full disc magnetograms to generate polar projections

of the fields for each hemisphere. Image processing will utilize the IDL,

IRAF, and AVS software packages. In addition to partial polar plots obtained

on a daily bases, we propose to obtain synoptic polar magnetograms by merging

the individual images using an algorithm which has been developed for the lower

resolution GONG magnetograms (Li and Wilson, 1996).


Experience with the BBSO polar magnetograms has shown that, while high spatial

resolution may be achieved, the time resolution is insufficient to permit the 

study of the evolution of the small scale magnetic features (Varsic, Wilson 

and Li, in preparation). While the time resolution of the GONG magnetograms 

is adequate, the spatial resolution is low and atmospheric seeing distortions 

make it difficult to follow the evolution of the small scale features. It is 

hoped that the SOI magnetograms will provide adequate spatial and temporal 

resolution for this study.
	

See Also:
=========
1. Li and Wilson: 1996, 1996 Western Pacific Geophysical meeting, Brisbane, 

                        Australia, p. W98.

2. Varsic, Wilson, and Li: in preparation.