Solar Soft X-ray irradiance with Hinode/XRT
Aki Takeda(MSU) and Kaitlin Cerrillo(BSC) as a REU project 2017
Project description
Montana State University(MSU) is home of
Hinode/XRT Synoptic Composite Image Archive (SCIA),
which is the archive of soft X-ray full-Sun images obtained with the X-Ray
Telescope on board the Hinode satellite. Our images are posted daily to
the SolarMonitor,
a popular site for solar researchers to check the current solar condition.
With this archive, we can study solar activity in terms of sun's
radiation in solar soft X-rays. In this project, we will process the
XRT/SCIA images taken from 2006 to date to derive solar soft X-ray
irradiance during this period. The student will learn how to handle
Hinode/XRT FITS data for quantitative analysis: selection of data files
and area of interest, derivation of temperature and emission measure,
calculation of the XRT irradiance in the physical unit comparable with
other instruments. Since the XRT is an imager, we can derive unique
spatial variations of irradiance, which have never be obtained with
other instruments that only measure the full-Sun integrated flux.
We will characterize dependence of the irradiance on solar latitudes,
or its association with particular solar structures, etc.
As a bonus, the student will have a few opportunities to watch and
learn how an international satellite project like Hinode is operated.
MSU will have two duty weeks of Hinode/XRT operation in June and July,
in which we actually take control of the XRT observation.
Weekly goals
- Week 1 (5/30 -- 6/2) : Get familiar with IDL and Hinode/XRT project. (Takeda out of town for Hinode-11/IRIS-8 joint sci. mtg.)
- Week 2 (6/5 -- 6/9) : Work on a sample month, 2010 January. Understand the sample program to calculate full-Sun intensity from a series of full-disk
composite images. Modify the program to calculate other 2010 months.
- Week 3 (6/12 -- 6/16) : Make a whole year plot for 2010.
Start thinking how to obtain N- and S-hemispheric intensities saparately.
Observe Hinode daily operation meeting on 6/14 at 19:30 MDT.
- Week 4 (6/19 -- 6/23) : Make a composite movie of image & intensity plot for 2010 (cf.,
monthly version of the movie).
- Week 5 (6/26 -- 6/30) : Make a "smooth"(improved data sampling, intensity scaling)
version of composite movie for 2010. Add N-hem and S-hem signal plots to the movie.
- Week 6 (7/3 -- 7/7) : Get use to the new color table use. Preparation of the mid-term presentation on 7/7. --- successfully done! ---
- Week 7 (7/10 -- 7/14) : Review of the data processing we made so far.
Move to processing 2010 Ti-poly images. Make Al-mesh and Ti-poly complete
pairs for temperature analysis. Met with Loren Acton on 7/12 from 1:30pm.
- Week 8 (7/15 -- 7/21) : Create Al-mesh and Ti-poly image pair for 2009.
Study about the Filter Ratio Method to derive Electron temperature (Te)
and Emission Measure (EM). Visit SSEL for watching Firebird cube sat operation
(7/18 evening, thanks to Arlo Johnson).
- Week 9 (7/24 -- 7/28) : Calculate Te and EM from Al-mesh and Ti-poly
intensity signal pairs for 2010 and 2009 data.
- Week 10 (7/31 -- 8/4) : Process as more years as possible. Prepare final
presentation file. Wrap-up(Document for your data & program creation).
Erase temporary(unnecessary) data files.
Kaitlin's final presentation file.
Resources
Bonus !
Kaitlin created a logo of our project:
Inspired by Kaitlin, and using a file and technique provided by her,
I made a few modified versions. (The background of Kaitlyn's logo is
actually a Yohkoh/SXT image. So I updated the background to XRT's wide
corona on Feb-2010 processed by R. Kano.):
Aki Takeda (Research Scientist, Dept. of Physics at MSU)