solar eclipse

WHPI repository of 2024 Total Solar Eclipse activities

whawkins — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 16:14:43 +0000

WHPI repository of 2024 Total Solar Eclipse activities whawkins Tue, 03/19/2024 - 10:14

Author:

whawkins

Mar 19, 2024

HAO is leading the effort through the Whole Heliosphere and Planetary Interactions (WHPI) initiative to support the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse by providing a platform for gathering information on ongoing eclipse activities. The WHPI Eclipse Campaign website aims to be a one-stop repository for existing or ongoing eclipse efforts.

The Total Solar Eclipse on April 8, 2024 offers ideal conditions for eclipse science, unique opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborations, and an excellent occasion for public engagement. HAO is leading the effort through the Whole Heliosphere and Planetary Interactions (WHPI) initiative to support the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse by providing a platform for gathering information on ongoing eclipse activities. The WHPI Eclipse Campaign website aims to be a one-stop repository for existing or ongoing eclipse efforts. We welcome any and all contributions, no effort is too small! Please contact us at whpi_help@hao.ucar.edu if you have any questions or would like to be included.

The repository is currently:

Linking to model prediction outputs of what to expect on the eclipse day;
Providing information on planned dedicated observations by ground and space-based assets that will pursue and support eclipse science;
Compiling a list of eclipse science experiments that will be deployed on or flown into the eclipse path;
Providing information on Citizen Science projects those interested can join in;
Listing planned outreach and public engagement efforts.

We hope our repository will promote interactions between the different efforts and foster collaboration across disciplines. We wish everyone a clear sky and happy observing of the eclipse!

Paul Bryans interviewed by Sun Superheroes

kolinski — Mon, 20 Dec 2021 19:16:54 +0000

Paul Bryans interviewed by Sun Superheroes kolinski Mon, 12/20/2021 - 12:16

Author:

kolinski

Dec 20, 2021

Solar Eclipse Team, Chile, 2019.

Paul Bryans tells Sun Superheroes that a solar eclipse is an opportunity to understand and study the Sun's magnetism. During a solar eclipse, when the moon blocks the Sun, it allows scientists to study the strength and shape of the Sun's surrounding magnetic field. The Sun's energy is completely magnetic and the more we understand its magnetism, the better we can predict coronal mass ejections, flares, and other explosive events that can impact the Earth's electric grid.

Paul explains that as a child he had no plans to become a Sun scientist. In highschool he enjoyed math and science and while studying physics in college he was offered a summer internship at a government Solar Physics lab in England. That experience sparked his interest and he has been studying the Sun ever since. Paul encourages everyone to make an effort to personally witness a total eclipse at least once in their lifetime. Experiencing a total eclipse is special, Paul says, when your surroundings become dark, then cold, and the stars appear in the middle of the day. The next total eclipse in the United States will be in 2024.

Sun SuperHeroes interviewed Dr. Paul Bryans of the High Altitude Observatory about his recent excursion to the Cerro Tololo Inter American Observatory in Chile to observe a total solar eclipse.

BACSMediaLab

The 2017 Total Eclipse was a Life-changing Four Minutes

kolinski — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 19:13:32 +0000

The 2017 Total Eclipse was a Life-changing Four Minutes kolinski Fri, 12/17/2021 - 12:13

Author:

kolinski

Dec 17, 2021

Jenna Samra had a very extraordinary scientific research experience while visiting Colorado this summer. The recent August 21 total solar eclipse provided Jenna a unique opportunity to test an instrument that she helped design and build, the airborne infrared spectrometer or AIR-Spec.

Jenna Samra, taken on the Gulfstream V research aircraft.

Alexandra Witze

Even a non-scientist, like myself, was fascinated in hearing Jenna’s story about what led her to become interested in solar instrumentation and how that brought her to the flight that was the pivotal moment in her graduate research, and later to HAO to analyze the flight data. Here are some excerpts from what she told me:

“As a child, I liked math and science, and at college (Penn State), I majored in Electrical Engineering because it had elements of both subjects. I stayed at Penn State to get a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and then started a job in applied research. While working, I got some experience with telescopes and spectrometers and developed an interest in optical instrumentation. That four-year work experience inspired me to begin a PhD at Harvard University, where I wanted to build instruments to research climate change. Two years into my PhD, I became interested in a project in the solar group at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). I am now finishing my thesis research on that project, which involved designing, building, and flying an instrument called the airborne infrared spectrometer or AIR-Spec.”

During the summer, 2017, Jenna was part of a Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory team that flew AIR-Spec on the NSF/NCAR Gulfstream V research aircraft. The team flew their instrument during the August 21 total solar eclipse and took infrared spectroscopic measurements of the solar corona. After the eclipse, Jenna returned to Boulder to analyze the eclipse data with HAO’s Philip Judge, an expert in spectroscopy and coronal science. Jenna explained to me that the instrument was designed to observe five coronal emission lines, which were highlighted in Judge’s 1998 paper as potentially useful for measuring the coronal magnetic field. The team believes that AIR-Spec made the first measurement of one of these lines. Jenna and Phil will publish a discovery paper soon.

While Jenna was on her airborne mission, Phil Judge and others from HAO, located at Casper Mountain, Wyoming, were busy making ground-based observations using four instruments that observed visible and infrared light from the corona. These observations will complement the data recorded from the air.

I asked Jenna more about her air flight experience and she elaborated, “The reason we had to be on an airplane was because many of the infrared wavelengths …are absorbed by water, carbon dioxide, and other gases in the earth’s atmosphere. If we were on the ground, this light wouldn’t reach us, but we were flying at 47,000 feet, which is above most of the atmospheric absorption. That’s higher than commercial, but not much, and it doesn’t feel any different when you’re up there. We were in a jet known as a Gulfstream V, which is usually used as a corporate aircraft.” The Gulfstream V, owned by NSF, is located at NCAR’s Research Aviation Facility (RAF). It has undergone various changes to make it suitable for scientific research, including being outfitted with special optical-quality viewports.

She continued, “One of the things that was really challenging about flying instead of observing from the ground was dealing with the motion of the plane relative to the eclipse. Imagine looking out of the window and trying to focus on one point on the horizon—that point is going up and down, left, and right when you’re in an airplane. The plane’s motion was something we had to compensate for in order to make sure that we stayed pointed at the eclipse at all times. We developed a system that would correct for the motion of the plane and always keep the eclipse in the camera.”

The pressure was on, because they only had four minutes of eclipse time. They wouldn’t get any do-overs so they left nothing to chance and practiced flight tests all summer, tracking and measuring the sun over and over again. During totality her team was very busy aligning the Airborne Infrared Spectrometer, assessing the timing, and staying on course by communicating with the pilots. Jenna was watching the context camera, which showed a white light picture of the corona (a black and white image), and PI Ed DeLuca was looking for the spectral emission lines. At first Ed was unable to see any of the lines, because the data was dominated by noise from the high thermal instrument background. Although this was unsettling at the time, the team discovered later that data post processing—a lot of alignment and averaging—would reveal all of their target lines. Jenna’s conclusion? “…We got data and that’s exciting!” The data will help scientists design a future instrument to measure the coronal magnetic field.

After this amazing summer experience I wondered how Jenna would settle down to writing her PhD thesis. Her answer? “The writing is going to require a different kind of mindset that I’m not in yet, but I think that I will get there. There’s always a little hump to get over before the writing gets easier, but right now I’m more in data analysis/instrument building mode, so I just have to transition over.”

I have no doubt Jenna’s passion for her research will see her to completion and further her path to a promising and remarkable future career.

A new facility for airborne solar astronomy: NASA’s WB-57 at the 2017 total solar eclipse

kolinski — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 17:11:37 +0000

A new facility for airborne solar astronomy: NASA’s WB-57 at the 2017 total solar eclipse kolinski Thu, 11/18/2021 - 10:11

Publication Name: ApJ; First HAO Author's Name: Paul Bryans; Authors names as they are listed in article: Amir Caspi, Daniel B. Seaton, Constantine C. C. Tsang, Craig E. DeForest, Paul Bryans, Edward E. DeLuca, et al.

Author:

kolinski

Nov 18, 2021

NASA's WB-57 High Altitude Research Program provides a deployable, mobile, stratospheric platform for scientic research. Airborne platforms are of particular value for making coronal observations during total solar eclipses because of their ability both to follow the Moon's shadow and to get above most of the atmospheric airmass that can interfere with astronomical observations.

Fully processed image of the corona generated by stacking many co-aligned, calibrated images and applying a radial filter and multi-scale unsharp mask to bring out details at higher altitudes.

We used the 2017 Aug 21 eclipse as a pathfinding mission for high-altitude airborne solar astronomy, using the existing high speed visible-light and near-/mid-wave infrared imaging suite mounted in the WB-57 nose cone. In this paper, we describe the aircraft, the instrument, and the 2017 mission; operations and data acquisition; and preliminary analysis of data quality from the existing instrument suite. We describe benets and technical limitations of this platform for solar and other astronomical observations. We present a preliminary analysis of the visible-light data quality and discuss the limiting factors that must be overcome with future instrumentation. We conclude with a discussion of lessons learned from this pathnding mission and prospects for future research at upcoming eclipses, as well as an evaluation of the capabilities of the WB-57 platform for future solar astronomy and general astronomical observation.

solar eclipse

WHPI repository of 2024 Total Solar Eclipse activities

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A new facility for airborne solar astronomy: NASA’s WB-57 at the 2017 total solar eclipse

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