Understanding the flare heating process with multiwavelength observations

Advisor: Chunming Zhu

A solar Flare is an intense burst of radiation in the solar atmosphere. It is thought to be composed of thousands of loops that evolve independently and sequentially. Our solar group at MSU developed a method to quantify the energy input into each flaring loop. This is achieved by modeling the flare heating and cooling processes, with constraints using multi-wavelength observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft.

In this project, students will run models and analyze astronomical observations, and learn about the Sun's atmosphere and magnetic fields. Experience with IDL or similar programming languages is desired though not required.

You can read about a related REU project in 2021 , which is presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.