Awards for two young MPS scientists

During the Symposium of the International Astronomical Union in Jaipur (India) Mariangela Viviani and Vincent Böning were rewarded with the "Best Poster Award" in their sessions.

Mariangela Viviani convinced the jury with her study on the influence of the rotation rate on stellar magnetic fields. She found that at low rotation the magnetic field is mostly axisymmetric, while at higher rotation it becomes nonaxisymmetric (see figure to the left). She clearly recovered the active branch seen in observations, but the transition from inactive to active stars appears in the models at a much lower rotation rate than in observations.

Vincent Böning developed and validated an improved method for seismic wave-propagation in the solar interior. Using two years of GONG data he concluded that an unambiguous detection of the meridional flow is limited to the upper half of the solar convection zone, a much shallower region than previously thought. This is a partial relief to the current controversial debate about measurements of the deep solar meridional flow (see figure above).