May, 30 2011 [T]
- Introductions, getting settled in
- Computer set-up
- IDL overview
June 1, 2011 [W]
- We learned more about IDL this morning.
- Project assigned. Make a graph of light intensity versus time for three different filters. Have all three in the same window but on different graphs.
June 2, 2011 [R]
- More IDL lessons.
- Finished my project.
June 3, 2011 [F]
- More idl
- Read papers on the cooling of solar loops, including one by Adam,
my mentor.
WEEK 2
June 6, 2011 (M)
- Helped Adam make his paper more readable.
Learned further about the cooling of solar loops.
- Started making this webpage.
June 7, 2011 (T)
- Went to first lecture on the sun, then continued working on the website.
- Worked on new project. Accessing data, then removing pictures that didn't take well enough.
- Website is essentially finished, aside from daily postings. I'm happy with it. It took quite a while to figure out how to get the pictures up.
June 8, 2011 (W)
- Continued working on project.
June 9,2011 (R)
- Continued working on my project. It now can read the Yohkoh images, play them, prompt the user to type which images to remove, and remove those images.
- During this process, I found that pico, my old word editor couldn't handle my "large" file. So I switched to Vi. Though frustrating at first, Viis better, and it's nice to work with it.
- Met with Dr. McKenzie and Adam about my presentation tomorrow. We went over exactly what we're doing and what I should say.
- Had a lecture this morning about methods of viewing the sun with Dr. McKenzie.
Discussed
the various types of instruments to observe the sun and how they worked.
June 10, 2011 (F)
- Updated my webpage.
- Finished preparing my presentation. I have a slideshow lined up with pictures. It is a five to seven minute project. I'm not worried. The meeting should be interesting.
- Worked further on my project.
- Gave my presentation.
- (Download PPT) |
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WEEK 3
June 13,2011
(M)
- Both Adam and Dr. McKenzie are out of town. I can contact them by email, but I will have to wait on help.
- My project is almost done. There are a few snags I don't currently understand. Emailing Adam.
- Talk today.
- Working on website.
- I have a second project. I need to make a program that will open files and then print the lcurves to the screen.
June 14, 2011
(T)
- Worked on big project. I only have 2 problems left. Been talking to Adam, but his email is down at the conference.
- Worked on the other project. I've got that almost done.
- Had a lecture on condesed matter. It seemed like an interesting field of physics.
June 15, 2011
(W)
- Continued working on my projects. I had trouble saving my light curves but I now know to put them in /disk/drive/bholmes rather than home/bholmes
- We have a tour of the lab today and a meeting with the gravitational waves grad students. Should be good.
June 16,2011
(R)
- Almost finished with my project. For some reason, the picture to pick the light curve from does not get bigger when I'm surveying multiple hours or removing frames.
- Started listing frames to remove, so that I can expedite the process when my program is completed.
- Been speaking with Adam, but it's been harder, because the internet at his conference is down.
- Had a solid state lecture. It was really interesting. Solid state and biophysics both have very interesting career possibilities.
June 17,2011
(F)
- Worked today on my program. Tough day for that.
- Went through the flares that we will be using as the data to test models. Have logged which frames to remove. I will probably have to remove more, but I have gotten a lot logged to remove.
- No presentations this week, since most everyone is gone. Adam and Dr. McKenzie will be back Monday.
WEEK 4
June, 20 2011
(M)
- Dr. McKenzie and Adam are back from their conference.
- Met with Dr. McKenzie and Adam.
- Recorded frames to remove from all of the flares, including frames that were not pointed at the flare. Unitl today how to do that was unknown to me.
- Began saving flares as light curves.
- Adding to the program that opens the light curve files. It will also divide the light curves into curves by the filter.
June 21, 2011 (T)
- Worked further on my program to open and display saved light curves and the program to create the light curves. We are adding a movie function to this program so that we can see how much jittering there is in the box we choose to make the light curve from. My program is running except the network to get some of its information is down.
- Had a lecture about the outward movement of the energy from the sun.
- Created a program to measure the distance between footpoints in flares.
- My program to open programs and display the light curves for each filter is working.
June 22, 2011 (W)
- The network that accesses our data is still down as of 11 today.
- Working on a project to calculate the amount of the sun measured be each pixel. This includes change due to movement across the sun. As the pixels look less directly, the sun becomes less parallel to the observing lens and more perpendicular. Therefore, the size of what's observed gets bigger.
June 23, 2011 (R)
- I attended a talk this morning on the solar exterior.
- All of Helios was down until 2 today and the data from Yohkoh is still inaccessable.
- I've been reading papers about solar flares today to increase my general knowledge.
- I have been refining the program to measure the footpoints' distance from each other.
- I have started making code for the cm per pixel problem, I worked on yesterday.
June 24, 2011 (F)
- I continued reading a large paper on flares. It is a current overview.
- I continued working on my program that measures the distance between footpoints and on my program that measures the number of cm in each pixel across the sun.
- Others presented today. Many people are measuring solar loop lengths, although they generally do it by tracing the loop, clicking out multiple points, not just the footpoints.
- Many of the other REU students and I went to Yellowstone this afternoon for Stars Over Yellowstone.
WEEK 5
June 27, 2011
(M)
- Continued reading the solar flare paper.
- Continued working on my programs to measure the length of the loop and to measure the cm per pixel observing the sun.
- I met with Adam and Dr. McKenzie for our weekly meeting. I will be presenting on Thursday. I will make a website presentation this time. The uncertainty should be back, which means I will be able to save the light curves of the solar flares again soon.
- Cleaned up my website. Made it alligned and consistent.
June 28, 2011 (T)
- Continued working on my project to measure the distance between footpints. It is now operational.
- The data from Yohkoh is once again available, so I will be extracting data from the satellite. This will fuel the rest of what we are doing for a while.
- I have been working on my project to determine how many centimeters of the sun are being observed by each pixel. After many adjustments it is working and giving expectable answers. It has functioning keywords which allow me to get the centimeters per arcsecond in the x, the y, or an average of the two.
- I have begun working on my presentation for this Thursday.
June 29, 2011 (W)
- Continued working on Thursday's project.
- Improved my program for exctracting data from Yohkoh. It now makes the images to scale. The more zoomed in images are smaller than the more zoomed out.
- Created a program to do the above mentioned. Made it so that it returns a new data array named data2. Am working on making it so that it will accept any size and fix it not just 64.
June 30, 2011 (R)
- Presentation today.
- This week I've made a program that takes data from Yohkoh and opens it up in stepper after removing over-exposed frames. It than allows me to remove frames that are off-centered or otherwise unwanted. It then makes a light curve out of the left over data. I then save the light curves and the picture of the pixels that are being made into the light curve.
- The first movie is the data before my program worked on it.
Before Movie
- The second movie is the data after my program worked on it.
After Movie
- I've also made a program that opens the save file that has the light curves, data, index, and uncertainty. It then breaks the data up into different filters. It then draws light curves for each filter.
- This is the light curves from the data operated on in the previous movie. As you can see it is divided into the three filters.
- I am currently working on a program that opens up the saved index and divides the index into filters. It then lets me click the position of the footpoints on every other picture for each filter. It graphs the changing length of the loop for each filter.
- This graph shows the movement of the footpoints. The footpoints have to be found by hand, so the graph is a little shaky.
- Finally I am also working on a program that calculates the amount of the surface of the sun in each pixel. This is a non-straight-forward problem, because the amount of surface per pixel changes as it moves to the edge of the sun, because the surface goes from being parallel to perpendicular to the observing lens.
- Above is a picture of the sun, divided into approximately even pieces along a one dimensional axis. As you can see, near the poles more of the sun's surface is observed per segment than near the equator. My program calculates how much per arcsecond is there.
July 1, 2011 (F)