Among its many features, with AZAM, one may:
- Interactively resolve the inherent 180° ambiguity of the magnetic field azimuth that is present in any measurement that uses polarization.
- Display the vector magnetic field in a number of ways: color images, arrows, contours.
- Interactively display the observed Stokes polarization spectral images along side of the individual Stokes polarization profiles of selected spatial locations.
- Interactively display the values of individual instances of the extracted magnetic and atmospheric parameters.
- Display the 2-dimensional images of the fitted quantities (i.e., Doppler shifts, line strength, fill fractions, field inclination).
- Display vector field properties in either the observer's frame or the "zenith frame" (as if the observer were looking directly down on the observed portion of the solar disk).
- Display images in solar coordinates (longitude, latitude), appropriately mapped to the grid on a spherical surface.
- Output images to PostScript for printing or other applications Blink images of different parameters against each other.
As part of the Ambiguity Resolution Workshop (2005), a head-to-head test of many methods for resolution of the ambiguity was carried out. In all test cases, AZAM exceeded the performance of any other method. However, AZAM is a manual method for resolving the ambiguity, so the success of its use depends heavily on the experience and knowledge of the user. Nonetheless, it remains a very useful tool for this important piece of the task of measuring solar vector magnetic fields.
Screenshot of an AZAM session operating on ASP data.