Research interests :

1. Study of the long term variation of sun using different solar features

2. Multiwavelength data from different space and ground based observatories

Long-term study of Sun:

Physical processes in the Sun happen in variety of time scales, ranging from few seconds to few tens of years. Solar cycle often refers to the cyclic variation in the sunspot number or in sunspot area with a period of ~11 years. Sunspots are the proxy for the magnetic fields of the Sun. Thus such variation related to the sunspots will obviously mean a variation in the solar magnetic fields. Thus, almost all the solar phenomena will be affected by this solar cycle including number of solar flares and occurrences CMEs. These two things (flares & CMEs) are particularly important to us as they affect the space-weather (Sun-Earth inter-space) heavily.

Long-term solar variation study at IIA is primarily based on century-long solar observational data from Kodaikanal Solar Observatory (KSO). We have now compiled a sunspot area database which spans from 1921 to 2011. This data is also made public. Visit this link to access it.