Research project
This summer I am investigating the turbulent motions of solar projections and flares. The Hinode Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) offers a high resolution that has never been available before, which has allowed solar physicists to discover new details of events that occur in the Sun's atmosphere. For example, upward flows of plasma have been observed before, but the Hinode now allows us to view downward flows and eddies that occur in the plasma as well. The high resolution shows that plasma exhibits a high degree of turbulence when disrupted by flares and prominences.
My role in this project is to download SOT data to prepare for analysis. This data includes many images (over 1000) and necessary information pertaining to each image, such as the time of capture, length of exposure, alignment of the telescope, etc. When these images are displayed in sequence, a movie of the event is produced. Once the data has been prepped, I use Local Correlation Tracking (LCT) to examine the turbulent motions that occur and are shown in the movie. Briefly, LCT is a technique that involves spreading corks (little white dots) evenly over an image. Each cork is associated with a specific fingerprint of that image. As that fingerprint moves over the duration of the images together, the cork follows it. The result is a movie of corks whirling around the screen, which represents the turbulence of the plasma. The corks can be manipulated to show various portions of the images. Once LCT is complete, the vorticity and enstrophy of the plasma can be investigated and plotted against the log of the inverse of the length scale of the corks.
Research log
Week 1 : Acquainting myself with IDL
Week 2 : Learning how to prepare SOT data for analysis
Week 3 : Practice with LCT
Resources
Here are some useful links:
Google
