The Sun From the Perspective of an Observer

Abstract:

This talk will reflect on issues and pleasures of observing the Sun from the Earth and from space over four sunspot cycles. Parker and those who preceded and follow his early estimates of how our star should/might/could work need to compare their models with the real Sun. The true test of a model is how well it explains reality. Observers try to make their own estimates of how the Sun does work based on observable proxies for the physical quantities of interest. It the best of times, the models match the observations. The results are seldom simple due to, at least, limitations of both models and observations.