SolarNews – Volume 2016 Number 16

SolarNews
The Electronic Newsletter of the
Solar Physics Division
American Astronomical Society
Volume 2016 Number 16

Aimee Norton, Editor
15 August 2016

CESRA New Highlights

Eduard Kontar
02 Aug 2016

Solar radio science highlight was just published: “Observation of a Quasi-periodic Pulsation in Hard X-Ray, Radio, and Extreme-ultraviolet Wavelengths”, by Pankaj Kumar, Valery M. Nakariakov and Kyung-Suk Cho. cesra.net/?p=646

The Highlight of Solar Radio Physics or CESRA Nugget allows you to publish fresh research to keep CESRA community informed and up-to-date. These are short communications written in the language accessible to a non-expert in the specific area.

The CESRA highlights can be followed/discussed at twitter.com/CESRA_community/ and www.facebook.com/solarcesra/

Back to Table of Contents

SDO/HMI Magnetograms – New Synoptic Data Products

Luca Bertello
03 August 2016

The NSO Integrated Synoptic Program (NISP) is pleased to announce the availability of new synoptic data products based on SDO/HMI data.  These include both pseudo-radial flux maps derived from the longitudinal HMI m_720s magnetograms and 3-component (radial, poloidal, toroidal) vector flux maps derived from the vector HMI b_720s magnetograms.  Two versions of the vector component maps reflect different options for the disambiguation of the quiet-sun (‘random’ and ‘radial-acute’).  This dataset covers the period May 2010 – January 2016, is described in the NSO Technical Report NSO/NISP-2016-002 (arxiv.org/abs/1605.03500), and can be accessed from the NISP/SOLIS project website (solis.nso.edu) or directly via ftp (solis.nso.edu/HMI/).

Back to Table of Contents

SunPy 0.7 Released

Stuart Mumford
08 Aug 2016

The SunPy project is pleased to announce the latest release of the SunPy library. This release is the result of 10 months of work by 27 people. Installation instructions can be found here. The highlights of this release are:

  • The new subpackage sunpy.coordinates enabling the transformation between Helioprojective, Heliocentric and Heliographic coordinate systems.  It also makes it easy to calculate and convert co-ordinates from different viewpoints such as SDO and STEREO.
  • A code gallery demonstrating common solar physics tasks using SunPy.
  • New draw_rectangle and draw_contours helpers for Map which make it easier to overplot rectangles and contours on Map plots.
  • Support for data masking in Map and MapCube.
  • Python 3.4 and 3.5 support. We recommend that all new users install Python 3 and that existing users consider upgrading as soon as possible.

The full list of changes and bug fixes can be found here.

If you have questions about using Python for solar physics or want to get involved with the project see our help page for ways to get involved with the community.

Back to Table of Contents

UKSP Nuggets of 2016 so far

Iain Hannah
11 Aug 2016

UKSP nuggets are monthly short articles highlighting solar physics research in the UK: www.uksolphys.org/uksp-nuggets/

70. Magnetic Flux Cancellation in Ellerman Bombs by Aaron Reid & Mihalis Mathioudakis (QUB)
A nice CRISP view of small scale flux cancellation in Ellerman bombs
www.uksolphys.org/?p=11860

69. Low-Coronal Sources of “Stealth” Coronal Mass Ejections by Nathalia Alzate & Huw Morgan (Aberystwyth University)
Image processing reveals the Not-So-Stealthy Sun.
www.uksolphys.org/?p=11722

68. Random bursty perturbations leading to wave-like characteristics in the corona by Ding Yuan and Robert W. Walsh (UCLan), Jiangtao Su (NAOC), Fangran Jiao (Shandong University)
Do coronal oscillations imply a periodic driver?
www.uksolphys.org/?p=11655

67. Solar Physics with SunPy by Stuart Mumford & Andrew Leonard (Sheffield & on behalf of SunPy)
The future of solar physics data analysis?
www.uksolphys.org/?p=10990

66. Evidence for similar processes occurring in stellar superflares and solar flares by Chloe Pugh, Valery Nakariakov & Anne-Marie Broomhall (Warwick)
Solar-like behaviour in stellar super flare lightcurves
www.uksolphys.org/?p=10953

65. EUV irradiances across a solar cycle by Giulio Del Zanna (Cambridge)
SOHO’s CDS spectrometer can be used to study the Sun’s impact on the Earth
www.uksolphys.org/?p=11189

64. 3D Electron Density Distributions in the Solar Corona during Solar Minimum by Judith de Patoul and Claire Foullon (Exeter) and Pete Riley (Predictive Science)
A new tomographic method promises better solar wind models
www.uksolphys.org/?p=10950

Back to Table of Contents

The Joint Next Generation Solar Physics Mission’s Science Objectives Team (NGSPM-SOT)

Toshifumi Shimizu
11 Aug 2016

The joint Next Generation Solar Physics Mission’s Science Objectives Team (NGSPM-SOT) has been formed based on the agreement among NASA, JAXA and ESA for the study of a possible multilateral solar physics mission concept. The objectives of this NGSPM-SOT are to a) develop the science goals for NGSPM, b) assess how these scientific goals are aligned with JAXA, ESA and NASA agency priorities, c) assess the required measurements necessary to meet the science goals, d) assess the top-level observational (mission design) strategy for the NGSP mission to accomplish the scientific goals, e) identify the minimum performance for the mission systems, and f) deliver a science report that supports the generation of documents suitable for input into any future joint Announcement of Opportunity or Call for Missions. The final report will be delivered to the agencies in summer next year.

The team members consist of 4 NASA appointed members (David McKenzie, Ted Tarbell, John Raymond, Sara Gibson), 4 ESA appointed members (Louis R. Bellot Rubio, Mats Carlsson, Lyndsay Fletcher, Sami Solanki) and 4 JAXA appointed members (Kiyoshi Ichimoto, Kanya Kusano, Hirohisa Hara, Toshifumi Shimizu). Shimizu chairs the team. All the members are points of contacts with the worldwide community; they will engage with the community, and collect ideas to build up the best optimized science goals and mission design options.

The team has started to review the Solar-C science objectives and will develop the revised set of science goals for the next generation solar physics in a couple of months. At the Solar-C science meeting in Nagoya, Japan on September 10 (attached to Hinode-10, hinode.stelab.nagoya-u.ac.jp/Hinode10/), the team will introduce its activity so far to the participants of the meeting. To develop the best science goals, the meeting will be a good opportunity to get feedback from the community.

Back to Table of Contents

Employment Opportunities

Postdoctoral Position in the SOLAR-C Project Office at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

Kiyoshi Ichimoto
04 Aug 2016

The National Astronomical Observatory invites applications for a postdoctoral position in the SOLAR-C Project Office. The Project Office is executing the research and development activity for the future space solar physics mission in cooperation with ISAS/JAXA. (1) Research topics on the sounding-rocket experiment CLASP (Chromospheric Lyman-Alpha Spectro-Polarimeter: hinode.nao.ac.jp/KakenS/index_e.shtml) and on a balloon-borne experiment Sunrise-3 (the research and payload development on the CLASP-2 and Sunrise-3 ). (2) Research topics in association with the future satellite project SOLAR-C: (hinode.nao.ac.jp/SOLAR-C/index_e.html : the research and development of the SOLAR-C science payload, research on the methodology to derive magnetic fields from expected polarimetric data, etc.)

The position is available from 1 November 2016 (starting date negotiable) and is offered for three years. For the detail, please visit the following website: www.nao.ac.jp/en/job-vacancy.html

Back to Table of Contents

Editor’s Note

2015 SolarNews Instructions

Aimee Norton
01 May 2015

SolarNews is normally distributed on the first and fifteenth of each month. Please send in your submissions by midnight (UT-7) the day before.

The SPD website can be found at spd.aas.org. The HTML version of SolarNews can be found at spd.aas.org/SolarNews or solarnews.nso.edu. Archived back issues can be retrieved at solarnews.nso.edu.

SolarNews submissions can be in plain text or HTML markup. Submissions should be made via the submission webform at solarnews.aas.org/

The online version contains in-line hyperlinks to all of the websites and email addresses mentioned in the issue. A link to send email feedback to the contributor, without the email address being accessible, is included in each article.

To make an email address invisible within the body of a SolarNews posting, and inaccessible to robots that collect them for spam, simply format it as @@text to appear@@email-address@@, for example “contact @@Jane Doe@@[email protected]@@” will appear as “contact Jane Doe“.

To make a URL a “clickable” link in your posting, make sure that there is http:// (or https:// as appropriate) before it. Thus “solarnews.nso.edu” appears as simple text while “http://solarnews.nso.edu” will appear as “solarnews.nso.edu” and will allow the reader to access the URL by clicking on the link in the HTML version of SolarNews.   Of course, you can always just format the URL in an HTML submission; for example http://solarnews.nso.edu“>solarnews.nso.edu/, which can be useful for an ftp or other server than http[s].

You can check your submission at http://solarnews.nso.edu/Preview, which is updated hourly, and let us know if something needs to be changed, for example remove a duplicate submission.

Please try to keep meeting and workshop announcements to no more than one page (fewer than 60 lines of typed text with 72 characters per line), with a Web address for further information.

If you wish to subscribe, unsubscribe from SolarNews, get a password reminder, or change your subscription, go to mailman.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/solarnews

Back to Table of Contents

SolarNews Archive