Before arriving in Bozeman, I was sent a 2005 paper from the solar group about the type of magnetic reconnection event that my research would involve.
After arriving and meeting with David and Dana to discuss what I had gotten from the paper, I was given a proposal to read which fleshed out the goals I had for the summer. Specifically, the project involed investigating a time delay that was observed in the 2005 paper. What we wanted to know is if this delay is typical, and if so how long does it typically take?
The whole REU group was given tutorials in IDL by grad student John Unverferth. I'm comfortable in a Unix terminal, and I'm used to coding in object oriented languages like C++ and Java, and IDL was a pleasent surprise when working with 3D data-cube arrays.
I was given a homework assignment to work on this week, to create a time/space stackplot by extracting a slit of pixels from a given set of images. Stackplots are integral to my project because it is by observing the "streaks" in the stackplot we will see the coronal loops between the two regions.
This week we also attended lectures (including a thesis presentation!) and had a kickoff mixer. I also attended my first McKenzie group meeting.