The Wilcox Solar Observatory (WSO) is a solar observatory in

Stanford, California Stanford is a census-designated place (CDP) in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is the home of Stanford University, after which it was named. The CDP's population was 21,150 at the United States Census, ...

that is used to produce daily observations of the

magnetic Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that occur through a magnetic field, which allows objects to attract or repel each other. Because both electric currents and magnetic moments of elementary particles give rise to a magnetic field, m ...

and velocity field at the Sun's surface. It began daily observations of the Sun's mean magnetic field in May 1975. Formerly known as the Stanford Solar Observatory, it is operated by

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and is located south of the Stanford University campus. It would later be named after solar physicist John M. Wilcox. WSO has historically been funded by NASA Heliophysics, the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

, and the Office of Naval Research. WSO uses a Littrow spectrograph together with a Babcock magnetograph on the 5250 Å iron-1

spectral line A spectral line is a weaker or stronger region in an otherwise uniform and continuous spectrum. It may result from emission (electromagnetic radiation), emission or absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption of light in a narrow frequency ...

, which it compares to the close by and magnetically insensitive iron-1 line at 5124 Å, to estimate the line-of-sight photospheric magnetic field to within 0.04

gauss Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (; ; ; 30 April 177723 February 1855) was a German mathematician, astronomer, Geodesy, geodesist, and physicist, who contributed to many fields in mathematics and science. He was director of the Göttingen Observat ...

.Magnetogram Chromosphere Observed from Wilcox Observatory
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References

External links

WSO - The Wilcox Solar Observatory
Astronomical observatories in California Solar telescopes {{Sun-stub