In this article I review the past and current status of solar astronomy in Korea and present some future prospects. Along with a brief historical account on the introduction of modern astronomy to Korea, I describe in detail how solar astronomy in Korea has developed since its birth about 20 years ago. With education of solar astronomers at domestic universities and collaboration with foreign scientists in China, Japan and the U. S., there has been a rapid growth of solar physics in Korea in the past decade. For further advance of solar astronomy in Korea, Korean solar astronomers have to build their own observing facilities and develop instrumentation programs. Also it is very important to bring up manpower competent for these projects.

The Earth is exposed to constant outflow of the solar wind from the outer layers of the Sun, and violent transient events taking place from active regions increase the energy flux of both radiation and particles leaving the Sun. Thus the space surrounding the Earth is a highly dynamic environment that responds sensitively to changes in radiation, particles and magnetic field arriving from the Sun. Nowadays, it becomes increasingly important to understand how the physical system of Earth-space works and how the space around the Earth connects to interplanetary space. In the present paper we describe how explosive solar events, such as CME(Coronal Mass Ejection) and flares affect the Earth-space environment and how the space weather reacts to them. Practical consequences are presented to demonstrate why a broader view of Earth's environment is greatly needed to cope with modern day's inhabitation problem in a rapidly developing space age.

The size of fine structures in the quiescent prominence that appeared on August 16, 1992 has been estimated using power spectra generated from intensity variations of Ha images of the lower part of the prominence, which were taken with a G1 CCD camera attached to 25cm coronagraph at Norikura Coronal Station in Japan. The lower part of the prominence has shown a distinct intensity variation with optical thickness of τ=1~5. Our analysis yields a mean size of fine structures ranging from 350 km to 1,000 km, in good agreement with Hirayama(1985) and Zirker & Koutchmy(1989, 1991).

To study kinematics of solar prominences, we have made Ha spectrographic study of an eruptive prominence which appeared on the 27th of August, 1992 with a position angle of 270 deg. The observation was carried out by a Littrow type spectrograph and a G1 CCD camera attached to the 25cm coronagraph at Norikura Coronal Station. In taking the spectral data the slit was placed in parallel to the solar limb at 7 different heights, each being separated by 5 arcsec with a time step of 30 sec. The observed eruptive prominence shows a wide range of line of sight Doppler velocity, spanning from Vdopp=−17.5km/stoVdopp=58.2km/s Vdopp=−17.5km/stoVdopp=58.2km/s . It is also found that the velocity increases with height at the rate of ΔV=0.86km/s/arcsec ΔV=0.86km/s/arcsec .

A quantitative analysis has been made to estimate the horizontal variation of physical parameters in a loop type active prominence by analyzing Call H&K and Hε… Hε… spectra taken from such an active prominence (appeared on May 23, 1981 with position angle 251 degree) with Littrow type spectrograph attached to 25cm coronagraph at Norikura Coronal Station of National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The spectral resolution is 1.12A/mm and the spatial resolution is 25'/mm for Call H&K lines. The present study shows that the turbulent velocity ranges from 10km/s to 20 km/s in the loop prominence, which are in good agreement with those of Hirayama (1989). It is also found that the temperature of the loop prominence is higher than that of quiescent prominences(\~8,000K) (\~8,000K) by about 4,000 K, whose temperature deviation seems very high.

To understand the basic physics underlying large spatial fluctuations of intensity and Doppler shift, we have investigated the dynamical charctersitics of the transition region of the quiet sun by analyzing a raster scan of high resolution UV spectral band containing H Lyman lines and a S VI line. The spectra were taken from a quiet area of 100"×100" located near the disk center by SUMER on board SOHO. The spectral band ranges from 906 Å to 950 Å with spatial and spectral resolution of 1" and 0.044 Å, respectively. The parameters of individual spectral lines were determined from a single Gaussian fit to each spectral line. Then, spatial correlation analyses have been made among the line parameters. Important findings emerged from the present analysis are as follows. (1) The integrated intensity maps of the observed area of H I 931 line (1×10 4 K) and S VI 933 line (2×10 5 K) look very smilar to each other with the same characterstic size of 5". An important difference, however, is that the intensity ratio of brighter network regions to darker cell regions is much larger in S VI 933 line than that in H I 931 line. (2) Dynamical features represented by Doppler shifts and line widths are smaller than those features seen in intensity maps. The features are found to be changing rapidly with time within a time scale shorter than the integration time, 110 seconds, while the intensity structure remains nearly unchanged during the same time interval. (3) The line intensity of S VI is quite strongly correlated with that of H I lines, but the Doppler shift correlation between the two lines is not as strong as the intensity correlation. The correlation length of the intensity structure is found to be about 5.7' (4100 km), which is at least 3 times larger than that of the velocity structure. These findings support the notion that the basic unit of the transition region of the quiet sun is a loop-like structure with a size of a few 10 3 km, within which a number of unresolved smaller velocity structures are present.

We have examined morphological change and movements of individual sunspots within a sunspot group in association with a large solar flare activity (3B/X1.5) appeared on 13 May 1981. For this purpose we measured distance among spots during the period before and after the flare activity and estimated the average velocity of their movement. Our main results are as follows: (1) The longitudinal displacement among sunspots are generally greater than the latitudinal displacement. (2) During the period the spots moved with an average velocity of 1.2 km/s in longitude and 0.86 km/s in latitude. (3) The most notable change took place in the central part placed between the two ribbons of the flare.

We have analyzed vector magnetograms and Hβ filtergrams of two sunspot groups, one in a growing phase and the other in a decaying phase. In this study, the temporal evolution of their magnetic morphology has been investigated in association with solar activity. The morphological variations of the growing and decaying phase of these sunspots revealed in detail the coalescence of small spots into a large spot and the fragmentation of a large spot into many small spots, respectively. Numerous small flares were detected in the spot group during the decaying phase. This seems to be intimately associated with the shearing motions of many spots with different polarities created by fragmentation of a large sunspot. The magnetic flux and the average shear angle are found to be substantially reduced during the decaying phase, especially in the course of the flarings. This implies that the decaying phase of the sunspot is, to some degree, involved with magnetic field cancellation. The growing spot group has not shown any large activities, but numerous small spots have grown into a typical bipolar sunspot.

An attempt has been made to analyze time series of Hα, Hβ, and Hɤ line profiles taken from a 3B/X6.1 flare which occurred on Oct. 27, 1991 in an active region, NOAA 6891. A total of 22 sets of Hα, Hβ, and Hɤ taken with a low and non-uniform time resolution of 10-40 seconds were scanned by PDS with absolute intensity calibration to derive the physical characteristics of the material in the flare chromosphere. Our . results are as follows: (1) The lower Balmer lines observed during the flare activity are broadened by Stark effect. (2) At the peak of the flare activity, the electron temperature of the Balmer line emitting region reaches up to 35000K and its geometrical thickness increases to a scale of ~104km, suggesting that high energy particles penetrate deep into the photospheric level.

We propose to use the entropy of power spectra defined in the frequency domain for the deconvolution of extended images. Spatial correlations requisite for extended sources may be insured by increasing the role of power entropy because the power is just a representation of spatial correlations in the frequency domain. We have derived a semi-analytical solution which is found to severely reduce computing time compared with other iteration schemes. Even though the solution is very similar to the well-known Wiener filter, the regularizingng term in the new expression is so insensitive to the noise characteristics as to assure a stable solution. Applications have been made to the IRAS 60μm and 100 μm images of the dark cloud B34 and the optical CCD image of a solar active region containing a circular sunspot and a small pore.

We have analyzed a set of high resolution photographic line profiles of a Zeeman sensitive Fe I λ 6302.5 line taken with the Universal Birefringent Filter over a single round sunspot (SPO 5007) at the Sacramento Peak Solar Observatory. The observed spectra recorded on films are traced by PDS and the traced densities are converted to relative intensity by means of IRAF. The Stokes I and V profiles are then constructed by adding together and subtracting from each other the left and right handed circular polarizations, respectively. The reduced I and V profiles are analyzed by means of the coarse analysis(Auer et al.(1977), Skumanich and Lites(1987)) with the use of inversion technique. It is found that the umbral field strength is about 3000 gauss and the field distribution follows closely the emperical model proposed by Wittmann(1974).

Magnetostatic models of starspots of late type main sequence stars ( G 5 V \~ K 5 V ) have been constructed to investigate their physical characteristics by using the similarity law suggested by Schluter and Temesvary(1958) and later employed by Deinzer(1965) and Yun(1968). The starspots are assumed to be single, circular and in horizontal magnetostatic equilibrium. In the present study we considered only those model spots whose area covers less than 12 % of the entire stellar surface as suggested by observations. The computed surface field strength of our model spots ranges from 10 3 \;to\;several\;10^3$ gauss and their magnetic flux is found to be 10 \~ 100 times that of sunspots. The field strength is sensitive to spectral type, which increases with later spectral type. In contrast to the field strength, the area of starspots depends strongly on the total magnetic flux. Finally, it is noted that the computed field strength of model spots belonging to G 0 V \~ G 5 V falls below the equipartition field strength at their parent stellar surface unless the coverage is less than 2 % . This suggests that the observed spot on G 0 V \~ G 5 V stars is likely to be a group of small starspots.

Infrared emissions from spherical dust, clouds are calculated using quasi-diffusion method. We have employed graphite-silicate mixture with power-law size distribution for the dust model. The grains are assumed to be heated and cooled by radiative processes only. The primary heating source is diffuse interstellar radiation field. hut the cases with an embedded source are also considered. Since graphite grains have higher temperature than silicate grains, the observed IR emission is mainly due to graphite grains, unless the fraction of graphite grains is negligibly small. The color temperature of Bok globules obtained from IRAS 60 and 100 μ m data are found to be consistent with the dust cloud with graphite-silicate mixture exposed to average interstellar radiation field. The color temperature is sensitive to the external radiation field, but rather insensitive to the size distribution of the grains. We found that the density distribution can be recovered outside the beam size using the inversion technique that assumes negligible optical depth. However, the information within the beam size is lost for if beam convolved intensity distributions are used in deriving density profile.

An attempt has been made to examine the characteristics of acoustic and MHD waves generated in stellar convection zones( 4000 K ≤ T e f f ≤ 7000 K , 3 ≤ log g ≤ 4.5 ). With the use of wave generation theories formulated for acoustic waves by Stein (1967), for MHD body waves by Musielak and Rosner (1987, 1988) and for MHD tube waves by Musielak et al.(l989a, 1989b), the energy fluxes are calculated and their dependence on effective temperature, surface gravity and megnetic field strength are analyzed by optimization techniques. In computing magneto-convection models, the effect of magnetic fields on the efficiency of convection has been taking into account by extrapolating it from Yun's sunspot models(1968; 1970). Our study shows that acoustic wave fluxes are dominant in F and G stars, while the MHD waves dominant in K and M stars, and that the MHD wave fluxes vary as T 4 e f f ∼ T 7 e f f in contrast to the acoustic fluxes, as T 10 e f f . The gravity dependence, on the other hand, is found to be relatively weak; the acoustic wave fluxes ∝ g − 0.5 , the longitudinal tube wave fluxes ∝ g 0.3 and the transverse tube wave fluxes ∝ g 0.3 . In the case of the MHD body waves their gravity dependence is found to be nearly negligible. Finally we assesed the computed energy fluxes by comparing them with the observed fluxes F o b of CIV( λ 1549 ) lines and soft X-rays for selected main sequence stars. When we scaled the corrected wave fluxes down to F o b , it is found that these slopes are almost in line with each other.

We have investigated hydrodynamical behaviors of spicules by solving numerically the hydrodynamic equations subject to proper boundary conditions using the method of characteristics. We examined the behaviors of MHD slow mode waves propagating through rigid magnetic flux tubes which were excited by the pressure perturbations at the lower boundary. It is found that the spicules are identified as the manifestation of the movement of the transition region being pushed upward by collisions with the shock waves. One of the most important findings is the presence of the rebound shocks and their roles. We interpreted the rebound shocks in terms of the observed recurrent spicules.

To examine relations between stellar activity and rotation we estimated parameters of stellar activity such as R′ H K , R′ M g I I , R′ C I I , R′ C I V and R′ X − r a y from the published data which measure the activity levels of stellar chromospheres, transition regions and coronae. In the present study we considered only the main sequence stars in an attempt to minimize the influence of other stellar parameters such as radius, age and stellar convection on stellar activity since they are also known to affect the magnetic field generation. In the present analysis we selected only those stars that satisfy the following conditions: (1) flux measurements are available together with Ca II fluxes and (2) rotation periods are determined by Ca II observations. We derived relations between the ¯Rossby number Ro and stellar activity R′ H K , R′ M g I I , R′ C I I , R′ C I V and R′ X − r a y and assessed the relations by plotting R′ H K , R′ M g I I and R′ X − r a y against rotation period P rot for comparison with observations. From the comparison it is found that as far as the rotation-activity relation is concerned, (1) normalized surface flux R′ H K is better than the surface flux F′ H K , in the sense that R′ H K differentiates the color dependence better and (2) R′ H K defined by Rutten (1984) describes the observations notably better than R′ H K of Noyes et al. (1984).

In the present study a two-mode, separately concurring resonant cavity model is proposed for theoretical interpretation of the 3 minute umbral oscillation. The proposed model has been investigated by calculating the transmission coefficients of the waves propagating through the umbral photosphere (photospheric weak-field cavity) and chromosphere (chromospheric strong-field cavity) into the corona, for 3 different umbral model atmospheres by Staude (1982), Beebe et al. (1982) and Avrett (1981). In computing the transmission coefficients we made use of multi-layer approximation by representing the umbra] atmosphere by a number of separate layers with (1) temperature varying linearly with depth and (2) temperature constant within each layer. The medium is assumed to be compressible, non-viscous, perfectly conducting under gravity. The computed resonant periods, transmission spectra, phase spectra, and kinetic energy density of the waves associated with the oscillations are presented in comparison with the observations and their model dependent characteristics are discussed.

Making use of our extended version of ¨ O p i k ′ s convection theory, we have calculated magnetic cycle periods of the sun and late type stars by using Parker's dynamo theory, where we have included the non-linear effect. We presented a relationship between the computed cycle period and spectral type to analyze observed magnetic activities of the late type stars and long-term luminosity variations. It is found that (1) the stellar magentic-cycle period increases towards the later spectral type, (2) the rapid rotation facilitates the activity-related luminosity variation of stars later than about K5, (3) differential rotation plays a critical role in determining the magnetic activity-cycle period, and (4) the non-local effect should be taken into account in order to understand the observed long-term luminosity variations.

We have analyzed Gray's observed mean line bisectors of FS, G0, G2, and G5 normal dwarf stars and interpreted them by computing theoretical line bisectors based on a two stream model. A set of perturbed models has been derived, and their detailed structures on temperature fluctuations and velocity fields are presented as a function of depth, which account for the observed bisectors. From the present study, it is found that the degree of stellar convective overshootings and temperature fluctuations in the upper atmospheres increases towards earlier spectral types. The convection cell size inferred from these models is found to increase also with the advancing earlier type. We demonstrated the usefulness of line bisector analysis as a diagnostic probe for stellar convection.