MSU

1
MSU
The Group
Webpage solar.physics.montana.edu
Solar Physics Group
MSU Solar Physics is
TRACE
RHESSI and Max Millennium
SSELs MOSES
Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic
Imager
Transition Region And Coronal Explorer
Space Science and Engineering Lab

• The MSU solar group plays a large role in the
  day-to-day operation and scientific utilization
  of the NASA TRACE mission which was launched
  early in 1998.
• This battery of 4 ultraviolet telescopes provides
  spectacular new observations of the thin and
  dynamic interface region at the base of the
  corona. This region is also the source of much of
  the ionizing radiation that determines the
  properties of the upper atmosphere of the earth,
  such as the ionosphere and the ozone layer.

• MSUs laboratory for the construction of space
  experiments on rockets and satellites.
• Director Prof. David Klumpar
• The project closest to our hearts is a rocket
  payload called the Multi-Order Solar EUV
  Spectrograph. MOSES, under the leadership of
  Prof. Charles Kankelborg, gets an unbelievable
  wealth of full-Sun EUV imaging and spectroscopy
  information, just waiting to be picked apart by a
  curious physicist.

• Researchers believe that energy released during
  a solar flare accelerates electrons, which emit
  primarily X-rays, and ions, which emit primarily
  gamma rays.
• NASAs RHESSI mission, launched in Feb. 2002,
  combines for the first time high-resolution
  imaging in hard X-rays and gamma rays with
  high-resolution spectroscopy, providing detailed
  energy spectra at each point of a solar flare
  image. Co-investigator Prof. Richard Canfield
  (MSU)
• MSU oversees the Max Millennium Program to
  coordinate observations, data analysis, and
  theory of solar flares.

SDO/AIA
Magnetic Modeling
Yohkoh

• The Solar Dynamics Observatory will be the
  flagship for NASA's Living With a Star program,
  providing continuous observations of the Sun's
  magnetic fields, its surface and atmosphere, and
  the overall radiative output. MSU is a partner
  with Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics
  Laboratory and the Harvard Smithsonian
  Astrophysical Observatory in the development of
  SDO's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, which will be
  the most complex extreme-ultraviolet telescope
  ever constructed.  Co-investigators Prof. Piet
  Martens, Prof. David McKenzie (both MSU).  With a
  full-Sun field of view and unsurpassed clarity,
  AIA will observe in eight wavelength passbands to
  sample eight distinct regimes of plasma
  temperature every ten seconds, yielding the most
  complete picture of solar activity to date.

• MSUs Solar Theory Group, Prof. Dana Longcope,
  Prof. Piet Martens, performs analytic and
  computational studies of solar magnetic fields,
  addressing questions like
• ? How does the coronal magnetic field become
  stressed why does it suddenly release its
  stress as a flare or microflare? (Perhaps
  discontinuities, like "fractures", form in the
  magnetic field.)
• ? What identifies the part of the magnetic field
  where stress will accumulate? (Where will it
  "fracture"?)
• ?How does the magnetic field generated inside the
  Sun rise to the surface? It seems to form slender
  strands (flux tubes)why?
• ?Can details of the rise process tell us anything
  about the way magnetic field is generated inside?
  

• The primary emission of the extremely hot outer
  atmosphere of the Sun, the solar corona, is at
  X-ray wavelengths. The extended duration, high
  resolution X-ray images from Yohkoh are being
  analyzed in an effort to learn why the Sun has a
  corona and why it varies in intensity so strongly
  in response to the 11-year solar cycle. This
  satellite carried a solar X-ray telescope,
  prepared under the leadership of Prof. Loren
  Acton (MSU), designed to study high energy
  processes on the Sun.
• MSU is actively analyzing the results from the
  Japan/US/UK Yohkoh mission for studies of
  high-energy solar physics, which was launched in
  1991 and operated until December 2001.