Contributions by RG Giovanelli to the Study of Magnetic Field Structures

Abstract

R. G. Giovanelli was appointed as a Visiting Scientist at Kitt Peak National Observatory for six months in both 1975 and 1979, and then for an entire year in 1981. These times proved fruitful to him as well as to the Observatory. The Vacuum Telescope and its 512-channel magnetograph had been completed and were operational. Complementing this was a new powerful 2D image analysis machine called the Interactive Picture Processing System (IPPS). For the first time, solar surface features could be quantitatively observed, usually to a seeing limited resolution composed of arcsec pixels, and then readily analysed as pictures. As is often the case, those who built the instruments remained preoccupied with their perfection, and it fell to Giovanelli to put these new tools to effective use. He did this in a series of research efforts reviewed in the present paper. Happily, he drew many of us in Tucson into his projects, injecting us with enthusiasm and enlarging our knowledge of solar physics in the process.