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EPSRC-Royal Society fellowship engagement (2013): Heating of the solar atmosphere by small flares

Lead Research Organisation: University of Glasgow
Department Name: School of Physics and Astronomy

Abstract

Please refer to attached Royal Society application

Planned Impact

Please refer to attached Royal Society application
 
Description The work was able to successfully use EUV and X-ray observations of the Sun to investigate the amount of emission at different temperatures (known as the Differential Emission Measure, or DEM), with the X-ray data helping to constraint the amount of material at higher (> 5-10 MK) temperatures, which some models of the energy release in the Sun's atmosphere predict to be present. The code used for this project, which can be adapted to other temperature senesitive observations, has been made publicly available via https://pypi.org/project/demregpy/ and https://github.com/ianan/demreg - where the latter has examples of usage with solar X-ray and EUV data in either IDL or Python. The Python version of the software (partially developed during this project, and with subsequent additional funding of a PDRA) has now been used by in several solar journal publications.
Exploitation Route The software is publicly available on either via https://pypi.org/project/demregpy/ and https://github.com/ianan/demreg - where the latter has examples of usage with solar X-ray and EUV data in either IDL or Python.
Sectors Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

Other
 
Description ISSI Bern team meeting
Amount SFr. 6,000 (CHF)
Organisation International Space Science Institute (ISSI) 
Sector Academic/University
Country Switzerland
Start 01/2016 
End 06/2017
 
Description Collaboration with Ireland & Viall 
Organisation National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Department Goddard Space Flight Center
Country United States 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution Visit and placement at Nasa Goddard Space Flight Centre, USA for a month to develop the analysis tools for producing lightcurves as a function of temperature instead of wavelength channel for quiescent regions observed in EUV with SDO/AIA. This can then be used as an input to other analysis techniques to determine the heating properties of regions of the solar atmosphere.
Collaborator Contribution Expertise of different analysis techniques to be applied to the SDO/AIA lightcurves which can determine physical properties of the underlying heating mechanisms within different model scenarios. Dr Nicholeen Viall has expertise on a time-lag approach in comparison to EBTEL nanoflare models and Dr. Jack Ireland has expertise in fourier time series analysis to determine heating properties.
Impact Work is still on going and publications should be finished and submitted in 2017. There have been presentations on this work at some meeting, including at the LWS/SDO workshop in Burlington, US in Oct 2016.
Start Year 2016
 
Description Live TV/Web coverage of partial solar eclipse 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact The RA employed on the grant spent a morning at the STV studios in Glasgow where a live TV/Web programme was broadcast leading up to and during the partial solar eclipse. The main audience here was school children learning about the eclipse but also the work at Glasgow on solar physics.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2015
 
Description Solar Eclipse event 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Undergraduate students
Results and Impact We hosted a viewing event at two locations on campus for the partial solar eclipse in March 2015. We were able to chat to those attending about the solar physics we do at Glasgow whilst the eclipse was happening. Well over thousand people attended at our two locations on campus. We also conducted several TV, radio, newspaper and online interviews before and during the event.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2015
URL http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/?p=3626