MARK WEBER

Physicist

Telephone: (406)994-7375
Fax: (406)994-4452
weber@physics.montana.edu

Dr. Mark Weber
Department of Physics
Montana State University
Bozeman, MT 59717-0350

Solar Physics

B.S., Physics, 1991, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA
M.S., Physics, 1995, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT
Ph.D. Physics, 1999, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT

My Curriculum Vitae.

If you are J. Klimchuk, here is the IDL save file you are looking for.

And here is the file of synoptic charts.


Research: Physics of the Solar Corona and Solar Magnetosphere


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.)

Interests

Coronal Differential Rotation
Large-Scale Structure and Evolution of Magnetic Fields in the Solar Atmosphere
Prominence Formation and Eruption
Coronal Mass Ejections

Publications and Papers

(PostScript files compressed with gzip)

"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

Project Notes

Wolfson: 14-Feb-00
Discussion of uncertainties in SXT measures.


Extra Stuff

LaTeX


To Physics Dept Homepage To MSU Solar Physics Homepage

Questions and/or comments can be addressed to: webmaster@physics.montana.edu
Last Updated: 21-Mar-00