IDL TUTORIAL
 
[Michael Hahn]

Michael Hahn

I'm Michael Hahn an undergraduate physics major at Carnegie Mellon University. I'm from Northford Connecticut (a fairly small town a few miles North of New Haven). I spent this summer in Bozeman Montana with the REU program of the Montana State University Solar Physics Group. I worked with Richard Canfield, Dana Longcope and Dibyendu Nandi on a project that took a statistical look at what characteristics of solar active regions contributed to solar flare energy output, and particularly a parameter called alpha, which is a measure of the twist in a magnetic field. 

mhahn@andrew.cmu.edu 


 

Relating The Physical Properties of Active Regions to Solar Flares


                         My project involved relating the physical properties of Active Regions to Solar 
              Flare production. The method we used was statistical. We compared
              characteristics and flare data from over 120 regions. We considered the
              alpha value for the region ( a measure of magnetic field helicity),
              Bz, |Bz|, Jz, (where B is the magnetic field and J is current), perpendicular
              magnetic field and total  magnetic field. In considering flare production we looked 
             at the integrated energy flux released by the flares, the size of the maximum flare, and
              the number of flares produced. We concluded that there is no relation
              between the general alpha distribution and flare production, and that the best
              correlation is for the mean and variance of |Bz| with the integrated flare
              energy. As for alpha, further investigation into its relationship with the
              flare production of active regions showed that the change in the variance
              of the alpha distribution over time is related to the flare production of
              the region. However we did not find a clear relationship between changes in alpha and 
                                                                 individual events. 
 
 
 

The Sun in white light, not the best picture but since 
it's my webpage I'll put it up anyway. The sunspots are 
manifestations of active regions where there is a strong magnetic field


 

Some nifty web pages about the Sun: