High‐Resolution Observations of Small‐Scale Emerging Flux in the Photosphere

High-resolution observations of a quiet-Sun region made on 1998 May 23 with the Swedish Vacuum Solar Telescope (SVST) are presented. I study the dynamics of magnetic elements on scales ≤1'' using Fe I λ6302 magnetograms and cotemporal G-band λ4305, Ca II K line λ3933, and Hα λ6563 filtergrams. This 3 hr long data set, obtained under excellent seeing conditions, reveals several cases in which flux concentrations that have recently emerged in the internetwork are rapidly (within 10-15 minutes) dispersed after emergence. The magnetic flux, initially quite concentrated (~05), seems to get spread out (to several arcseconds) and/or shredded as a result of granular action, until it falls below the noise level in the magnetograms and becomes undetectable. These magnetic flux concentrations are much smaller than ephemeral regions, in both spatial extent and magnetic flux (of order 5 × 1017 Mx). They do not seem to get cancelled by opposite polarity and typically are not associated with G-band bright points or Ca II K line brightenings. These events may be related to the horizontal internetwork fields (HIFs) described by Lites and colleagues.