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Parker Spirals

Parker Spirals

If the sun didn’t rotate, then the frozen-in magnetic field would be carried out radially with the solar wind (v = 440 km/s on average). Instead, the sun’s rotation (ω = 2.87 x 10-6 rad/s) drags the magnetic field configuration into a Parker Spiral. The angle between the radial flow and the spiral can be found with simple trigonometry. where the radial component of the magnetic field at some distance from the sun’s center can be found through the conservation…

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Rossby Number

Rossby Number

The Rossby Number describes the importance of the rotation of the frame on the flow. It is the ratio of the inertial force (e.g. buoyancy) of the fluid to the Coriolis force imposed by rotation. A larger Rossby number will mean the flow’s behavior is less dependent on the rotation.   where describes the typical magnitude of the horizontal flow components, is the rotation rate, is the latitude of the fluid parcel on a sphere (e.g. Earth), f is the…

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