MARK WEBERPhysicistTelephone: (406)994-7375Fax: (406)994-4452 weber@physics.montana.edu |
Dr. Mark Weber Department of Physics Montana State University Bozeman, MT 59717-0350 |
And here is the file of synoptic charts.
LATEST NEWS: A paper on which I am a co-author has been accepted for publication by the Astrophysical Journal! (See below.)
OTHER NEWS
The last full week in February has been excellent to me. I have informally
accepted a one-year postdoc working with Dr. Peter Sturrock at Stanford.
It looks like we will be doing some exciting solar research. The job
begins May 1, and I expect to stay in Bozeman for most of the remaining
time. I've lived here quite a while, and there are lots of things I want
to do before I say goodbye.
In addition to this news, I have been promoted from Assistant Editor to full Editor on the IAU 195 Proceedings. It's been a fun experience, and I am grateful to Drs. Martens and Tsuruta for this honor. I've already updated my C.V.
My paper on characterizing rotation rates for the soft x-ray corona has been published finally! In it, my co-authors and I point out that there are often several features simultaneously moving at different rotation rates, and we develop a way to pull out the rotation information for separate tracers.
In the process of doing that paper, we discovered that the rotational behavior of the corona at high latitudes seemed to alternate between two phases. I have just submitted a paper on this bimodal behavior to Solar Physics which uses a surface flux-transport model to demonstrate that one of these phases is induced by the presence of an "activity nest", which is a spot on the Sun where concentrated flux erupts through the surface repeatedly for several months.
I have also submitted a paper on axial fields in quiescent prominences to Astrophysical Journal -- Letters in which I point out that the question of their direction can be easily explained by the decay of active regions. (The "question" has to do with the fact that the solar differential rotation is generally expected to shear the prominence fields and produce axial fields which would point in the opposite direction to the axial fields that are actually observed on the Sun.)
You can click here to
learn
a bit more about the research being done by other graduate students in our
Solar Physics Group.
(You also get to see an example of the beautiful stackplots with which
I get to work.)
"Axial Fields in Quiescent
Prominences"
M A Weber and P C H Martens.
Submitted to the Astrophysical Journal - Letters.
"Bimodal Behavior in Solar
Rotation Rates"
M A Weber and D W Longcope.
Submitted to Solar Physics.
"Rotation Patterns in the
Large-Scale Solar Corona"
M A Weber 1999,
Ph.D. thesis, Montana State Univ--Bozeman.
"A Method for Characterizing
Rotation Rates in the Soft X-Ray Corona"
M A Weber, L W Acton, D Alexander, S Kubo, and H Hara 1999,
Solar Physics, 189, 271.
"Coronal X-Ray Brightness and Photospheric Magnetic
Field: A Study in Correlations"
R Wolfson, C B Roald, P A Sturrock, and M A Weber 2000,
accepted by the Astrophysical Journal (20-Mar-00).
"An Analytic Model of an Isothermal Solar
Wind Plasma Interacting with a Neutral Interstellar Component"
M Weber 1998, in: "Plasma Physics in Solar and Astrophysical
Settings"
(Term papers for Plasma Physics course at Montana State Univ in Fall
1997)
D Longcope, ed. (Figures missing.)
"Differential Rotation Rates in the Soft X-Ray Solar Corona"
M A Weber, D Alexander, and L W Acton 1997,
Memorie della Societa Astronomica Italiana, vol. 68 - n.2
(Proceedings of The 2nd Napoli Thinkshop on Physics and Astrophysics:
The Inconstant Sun).
"Solar Origin of the 26-Day Periodicity Observed by Ulysses"
T Bai, J T Hoeksema, M Weber, and L W Acton 1997,
Journal of Geophysical Research 102, 9793
Not sure if you want to use msuphys_letter.tgz? Here is a PostScript file for the template example. Download it and take a look with your favorite PS viewer.
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21-Mar-00