Rob J. Rutten
This contribution honoring Kees de Jager's 80th birthday is a review of "one-dimensional'' solar atmosphere modeling that followed on the initial Utrecht Reference Photosphere of Heintze, Hubenet & de Jager (1964). My starting point is the Bilderberg conference, convened by de Jager in 1967 at the time when NLTE radiative transfer theory became mature. The resulting Bilderberg model was quickly superseded by the HSRA and later by the VAL-FAL sequence of increasingly sophisticated NLTE continuum-fitting models from Harvard. They became the "standard models'' of solar atmosphere physics, but Holweger's relatively simple LTE line-fitting model still persists as a favorite of solar abundance determiners. After a brief model inventory I discuss subsequent work on the major modeling issues (coherency, NLTE, dynamics) listed as to-do items by de Jager in 1968. The present conclusion is that one-dimensional modeling recovers Schwarzschild's (1906) finding that the lower solar atmosphere is grosso modo in radiative equilibrium. This is a boon for applications regarding the solar atmosphere as one-dimensional stellar example -- but the real sun, including all the intricate phenomena that now constitute the mainstay of solar physics, is vastly more interesting.
Manuscript: jad8_8d.ps