The effects of spatio-temporal resolution on deduced spicule properties

Abstract

Spicules have been observed on the Sun for more than a century, typically in chromospheric lines such as Hα and Ca II H. Recent work has shown that so-called "type II" spicules may have a role in providing mass to the corona and the solar wind. In chromospheric filtergrams these spicules are not seen to fall back down, and they are shorter lived and more dynamic than the spicules that have been classically reported in ground-based observations. Observations of type II spicules with Hinode show fundamentally different properties from what was previously measured. In earlier work we showed that these dynamic type II spicules are the most common type, a view that was not properly identified by early observations. The aim of this work is to investigate the effects of spatio-temporal resolution in the classical spicule measurements. Making use of Hinode data degraded to match the observing conditions of older ground-based studies, we measure the properties of spicules with a semi-automated algorithm. These results are then compared to measurements using the original Hinode data. We find that degrading the data has a significant effect on the measured properties of spicules. Most importantly, the results from the degraded data agree well with older studies (e.g., mean spicule duration more than 5 minutes, and upward apparent velocities of about 25 km s-1). These results illustrate how the combination of spicule superposition, low spatial resolution and cadence affect the measured properties of spicules, and that previous measurements can be misleading. © 2013. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.