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	Magnetic loops and structures are visible in this ultraviolet image of the Sun's corona. Image courtesy SOHO/EIT

Current work in solar physics focuses on understanding how the Sun produces its magnetic field, and how ongoing changes in the surface magnetic field give rise to space weather and related effects throughout the solar system.

Computer Vision Software

Staff members at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) have developed computer vision software to identify and track hundreds of thousands of magnetic features on the surface of the Sun simultaneously, determining their motion and history as they interact with one another. In this way, the nature of the Sun’s complex magnetic dynamo can be probed.

By statistically analyzing the history of magnetic features, the team demonstrated that the solar magnetic field is dominated by dynamo action on scales no larger than 100 miles. The computer vision software is currently being deployed as part of the data pipeline for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. In addition to relating magnetic activity to features in the solar corona, it will be used to identify new emerging flux regions on the Sun and predict space weather in real time.

Solar Flares

	Magnetic field lines entwine and tangle in this fluxon simulation of a small (30,000 miles square) piece of the Sun's atmosphere.
	The SHAZAM instrument was recently deployed at the National Solar Observatory facility near Alamogordo, NM. the telescope is more than 300 feet tall, with two-thirds of it underground.

Magnetic field lines in the electrically conductive plasma of the Sun can become stretched, twisted and tangled. When field lines suddenly snap and reconnect, plasma can be hurled out as a solar flare or a larger coronal mass ejection (CME). The new "fluxon" simulation of the solar magnetic field treats field lines directly as physical objects, rather than as a distributed field in space, as has been the traditional approach. The high fidelity at a hundred-fold increase in computation speed has been remarkable. This enabled scientists to identify a new type of instability that causes magnetic explosions without reconnecting field lines.

RAISE and SHAZAM

Understanding dynamics and magnetic field evolution on the Sun requires new instruments that can extract information from the solar spectrum quickly and at high spatial resolution. The Planetary Science Directorate has a strong solar instrument development program.

Two prototype instruments — SHAZAM and RAISE — take quite different approaches to measuring the solar spectrum.

• RAISE

RAISE is an ultraviolet imaging spectrograph that is undergoing final testing before launch in the spring of 2010. It will collect several spectra per second, accumulating some 27,000 in all, during a single six-minute suborbital rocket flight.

• SHAZAM

SHAZAM is a high-speed Doppler magnetograph that uses a new measurement technique — spectral stereoscopy — to measure the smallest magnetic features on the Sun using subtle polarization effects in sunlight. SHAZAM will ultimately be deployed on the world’s largest solar telescope, the 4-meter Advanced Technology Solar Telescope under construction on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

Future Space Weather Study

The solar group will continue to study solar roots of space weather phenomena, predicting and tracking CMEs from spacecraft and ground-based radiotelescopes. Further spectral imager and flight-instrument development is facilitated by a new heliostat lab. The RAISE sounding rocket has provided a gateway into major instrument projects, including the new SPICE UV imaging spectrograph that has been selected to fly to the inner solar system on board the European Solar Orbiter mission in 2017.

For more information about our solar physics research capabilities, or how you can contract with SwRI, please contact Robert Grimm, Ph.D., at rgrimm@swri.org or (720) 240-0149.

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Southwest Research Institute^® (SwRI^®), headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, is a multidisciplinary, independent, nonprofit, applied engineering and physical sciences research and development organization with 11 technical divisions.

December 28, 2012