Probing the rotation rate of solar active regions: the comparison of methods

Abstract

Abstract Sunspot groups are often used as tracers to probe the differential rotation of the Sun. However, the results on the rotation rate variation obtained by different authors are not always in agreement. The reason for this might be a number of effects. In particular, faster decay of the following part of a sunspot group results in a false apparent shift of the area-weighted center of the group toward the leading part. In this work we analyze how significantly this effect may contribute to the derived rotation rate. For a set of 670 active regions, we compare the rotation rate derived from continuum intensity images to that derived from line-of-sight magnetograms. We found that the difference between the calculated rotation rates is 0.45° day−1 on average. This value is comparable to the difference between the rotation rate of the solar surface near the equator and at 30° latitude. We conclude that the accuracy of the rotation rate measurements using white-light images is not satisfactory. Magnetograms should be used in future research on the differential rotation of the Sun.