Week 1

For the first week we did lots of orientation. 9am Tuesday through Friday morning we had a class on IDL. We also had a couple of seminars about the sun form guest speakers. I started working on an aurora borealis detector, a project which will take me through the rest of the REU.

Week 2

We characterized the filters for the three PMTs which will be on the aurora detector. We then built a Matlab program to graph that data. We figured out the solid angles and graphed them. We also decided to tilt one of our filters tor optimal absorption.

Week 3-4

We further studied the data and decided not to tilt the green online filter. We found he focal point of the lens we would be placing in front of the PMT to focus the light onto the detector.

Week 5-8

We finished up the field of view test for all three filters. Each filter was tested twice, the second time turned 90° counterclockwise.

Week 9

We figured out the solid angle and what needed to be done to calibrate the filters. A monochromator will be used for that.