Fine structure and dynamic heating from temporal and spatial analysis of a solar active region observed with Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)

An outstanding issue in current solar and astrophysical research is that of the heating of the solar corona. How is the corona heated to temperatures of greater than 1 MK when the photosphere below is only 6000 K? One observational approach to addressing this important question is to focus on particular areas in the corona such as active regions (ARs). In a scenario that heating is impulsive and the cross-field spatial scale of the heating is so small, under the resolution of the current instruments, we attempted to narrow the question further to discrete bright magnetic flux tubes, the coronal loops, inside active regions. We investigate the emission variability, heating and substructure o…