The exact mechanisms leading to chromospheric heating are still ill-defined. While the presence of magnetic elements is undoubtedly necessary, the details of the heating, and its spatio-temporal distribution remain poorly understood. We contribute to this topic by analyzing the behavior of hot chromospheric fibrils surrounding network and plage elements, identified via the broader Hα profiles observed along their length; the H-α spectral line width has been shown to correlate with the local chromospheric temperatures through comparison with the ALMA millimeter-continuum brightness temperature. We make use of loop tracing and analysis software to investigate characteristics of the chromospheric hot fibrils including their length, number density, and transverse spatial extension in an enhanced network region.

The joint variability of chromospheric emission with the integrated flux in the Kepler visible band for the Sun as a star is examined. No correlation between our Ca II K line parameter and the Kepler passband is seen, suggesting that visible-band variability in solar-like stars is mostly independent of solar-like chromospheric activity. However, the K-line parameter time series and the total solar flux in the infrared K band appear weakly correlated, reflecting the wavelength dependence of the relationship between magnetic activity and broadband variability. We then apply a schematic, three-component model as a framework for the discussion of stellar photometric variability as observed by Kepler. The model confirms that spots tend to dominate stellar photometric variability in the visible though interesting cases do emerge where the facular disk coverage may become important in determining the amplitude of broadband variability.