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Understanding Coronal Cavities

20 September 2012: NASA's Solar Fleet Peers Into Coronal Cavities. An international team of researchers has completed a three-paper series that quantifies the morphological, density, and temperature structure within a coronal prominence cavity (Gibson et al., 2010; Schmit and Gibson, 2011; Kucera et al., 2012). These structures ultimately may erupt as coronal mass ejection (CMEs), but only after days or weeks of existence as a strikingly organized, elliptical coronal structure. Probing the physical properties of prominence cavities provides clues to the magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium states that precede a CME.

Figure Caption: (a) EUVI-A image of the cavity with (b) intensity contours overlaid. (c) Forward-modeled (line-of-sight integrated) EUV emission using model density and temperature with (d) intensity contour overlaid. Contours are in units of DNs-1.
See online movie for a model–data comparison of the variation of cavity location and visibility vs. time/longitude.

HAO Graduate Fellow

31 July 2012: HAO graduate fellow Maria Weber received an AGU Outstanding Student Paper Award for her talk titled, "Comparing simulations of rising flux tubes through the solar convection zone with observations of active region properties: Constraining the dynamo field strength", presented at the 2011 Fall AGU meeting in San Francisco. The AGU talk announcements appear in the premier international newspaper of the Earth and Space Sciences, (EOS-Vol. 93, Number 31, 31 July 2012). Also see LSV News.

Waves Might Heat Solar Atmosphere

3 July 2012: A team of astronomers, including
Scott McIntosh, discovered Alfvénic waves permeate both the corona and the transition zone between the corona and the chromosphere. (Photo courtesy NASA.)
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Secrets of the Sun

25 April 2012: Our own Sarah Gibson and Scott McIntosh are among the solar researchers featured in a new episode of the PBS series NOVA. "Secrets of the Sun".
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Inauguration of the Boulder Fabry-Perot Interferometer upper-atmosphere wind observation

16 March 2012: A Fabry-Perot Interferometer (FPI) was installed at NCAR Marshall Field, just to the south-east of Boulder, to observe thermospheric and mesospheric winds.
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Tying the Sun together

6 February 2012: HAO solar science is featured in a new article on NCAR/UCAR "AtmosNews". The article profiles the efforts to study and connect the solar dynamo and magnetic flux emergence by Mark Miesch and colleagues.
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Identifying the Beginnings and Ends of Solar Cycles

4 January 2012: HAO scientist's Mausumi Dikpati, Peter Gilman, Giuliana de Toma, and UCLA professor Roger Ulrich find that the latitude at which plasma sinking occurs is very important.
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Modeling the Impact of Severe Space Weather

14 December 2011: Space physicist, Michael Wiltberger–New simulations from the Coupled Magnetosphere Ionosphere Thermosphere model offer an improved view of the dynamic charged-material exchanges generated during magnetic storms.
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COSMO In China

18 November 2011: HAO Director Michael Thompson and Assistant Director for Instrumentation Steve Tomczyk recently visited China to discuss the COSMO project and other collaborations. Collaborators are pictured here, on a visit to the Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics & Technology (NIAOT). As well as visiting the Purple Mountain Observatory and NIAOT in Nanjing, Michael visited the National Space Science Center and National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, for discussions and exploration of future collaborations.
High Resolution Photo »

Searching For Earth-like Planets

November 2011: Check out this short YouTube video describing how astronomers are searching for Earth-like planets around other stars. Produced by HAO scientist Travis Metcalfe, with narration by Carl Sagan and video clips from NASA's Kepler mission.
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Pioneering GOLD Mission

September 2011: NASA announced that the Global Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission was selected for Phase-A Study. GOLD is a high-resolution ultraviolet spectrograph on a commercial communications satellite at geostationary orbit. Richard Eastes (UCF), is the PI. CU/LASP includes Instrument Scientist Bill McClintock and Proj. Manager Mark Lankton. HAO/NCAR leads the science team: Project Scientist Alan Burns.
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K-Coronagraph PDR

18 August 2011: The K-Coronagraph successfully completed its PDR (Preliminary Design Review) and will now move forward towards completion of the instrument build in 2012 —starting full operations at Mauna Loa Solar Observatory in the Summer of 2013.
High Resolution Photo »

Could a weaker Sun avert global warming?

21 June 2011: The Sun drives our climate, so a slowdown in solar activity would surely put the brakes on global warming—wouldn't it? That question percolated through the media following a set of reports from a solar physics meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Read More » | SPD Meeting »

HiWind's Recovery Mission

17 June 2011: HAO's HiWind data and payload was successfully recovered! HiWind is the first balloon-borne FPI to measure the daytime thermospheric winds that are critically needed for space weather research. The HiWind payload has modest pointing requirements combined with a modest weight.
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HiWind Launch

14 June 2011: HAO's HiWind, a balloon-borne instrument that measures winds in the thermosphere, was launched from Esrange, Sweden. It ascended about 26 miles (43 kilometers) into the atmosphere and headed west across the Atlantic Ocean, passing above Greenland on its way to Canada in round-the-clock sunlight.
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Sun-Earth Connections

May 2011: An exciting new exhibit was completed and is now open to staff and public at NCAR's Mesa Lab. Sun-Earth Connections, a joint project between EO and HAO, is located on the lab's mezzanine opposite the Main Seminar Room.
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Red Giant Stars

6 April 2011: An international team of astronomers that includes NCAR's Savita Mathur has observed mixed waves—a mixture of acoustic and gravity waves— that run all the way to the cores of red giant stars.
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