Overview–Synoptic Network Workshop
7 May 2013: The High Altitude Observatory recently partnered with the National Solar Observatory to hold a 3-day workshop to discuss and gather community input on science requirements, capabilities and instrumentation for a next-generation synoptic network of solar observing instruments. The workshop from April 22–24 was attended by 36 participants from six countries.
HAO–Community Matters
10 May 2013: HAO recently asked its community for input in the form of a two-minute survey. As a National Center serving the solar and space physics community, weneed to understand if we are having the desired impact on our community.Input from the community helps us to set our strategic priorities as wemove forward.
We queried about 1,000 stakeholders, and received agreat response of over 20% to the survey. There were two big takeaway messages:
Magnetotail Science and Aurora Viewing
13 May 2013: HAO Scientist Michael Wiltberger attended the AGU Chapman Conference on Fundamental Properties and Processes of Magnetotails in Reykjavik, Iceland, March 10–15, 2013. The conference gathered experts primarily from Europe and the United States to discuss processes occurring in terrestrial and other planetary magnetotails. Dr. Wiltberger gave an invited talk discussing his recent work using the multi-fluid version of the LFM global magnetosphere simulation studying the impacts of ionospheric plasma on the evolution of the Earth's magnetotail. Since other planetary magnetospheres have significant ion sources this work was complemented by other presentations at themeeting.
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NASA Selects GOLD and ICON Missions
18 April 2013: NASA has selected two new satellite missions to be built as part of the Heliophysics Explorer Program. The projects will provide space observations to study Earth's ionosphere and thermosphere, and will launch in 2017. The Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission, led by Richard Eastes of the University of Central Florida, is an ultraviolet imaging spectrograph that will fly on a commercial communications satellite in geostationary orbit to image the Earth's thermosphere and ionosphere. It will be built at the University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
Read More » See also: NASA press release » |
GOLD web site » |
ICON web site »
HAO eclipse team in Australia!
26 November 2012: A persistent overcast had a group of HAO staff biting their nails just after dawn on November 14. Stationed on a beach at Palm Cove, Queensland, they were ready to test their ambitious vision of creating unprecedented, crowdsourced footage of an eclipse—but it wasn't clear that the weather would cooperate.
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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).
LSV Section 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.
See YouTube Video »
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.
Read More » | See Science »