Introduction

Extract

Since the early 1960s the surface of the Sun has been know to be in a regular pulsating motion with periods of about 5 minutes. While at the beginning various explanations were offered, only in the 1970s it was recognized that these so-called solar oscillations are manifestations of global motions of the Sun about its equilibrium. Helioseismology is the name of the branch of astrophysics that deals with deciphering these data, that cover the whole range of spherical harmonics from l = 0 (radial) to very high angular order (above l = 1000). Thanks to observational data of superb quality (each of the oscillation frequencies is measured accurately to better than one part in ten thousand), our knowledge of the Sun has leap-frogged in the last 20 years. For instance, we now know the run of temperature inside the Sun, or have good information about the internal solar rotation. In the solar neutrino problem the data from solar oscillations have become a compulsory testing stone for any model proposed to explain the discrepancy between observed and theoretically predicted solar neutrinos.