ned Brock Parker REU 2022

Weeks 1-2

Week 1

Logistics

The majority of week 1 was spent getting familiar with the program, both on campus and on the computers. The first day was full of setting up ssh connections, figuring out housing arrangements, and touring the campus. The second day consisted of attending our first lecture, meeting with Dr. Chunming to discuss the project, and completing required NSF training. The third day consisted of attending our second lecture, reading chapters out of the textbook, along with related research papers by faculty in the department. The fourth day, Friday, consisted of getting familiar with IDL, including the SSW commands.

The weekend consisted of a hike to the 'M', and some pictures are included.


Week 2

Data Processing

The majority of the second week was spent getting familiar with the specific IDL programs used for this venue of research. The first day consisted of downloading AIA data, aligning it with rotations in mind, plotting it, and creating an animation.



The second day consisted of coding the download, crop, rotation, and alignment of HMI data to fit perfectly with the AIA 1600 reference image data,as well as the determination of bright pixels in the AIA 1600 data.


The third day consisted of determining which pixels in each image are flaring by comparing their brightness to the brightness of the background image. A lot of this day was also spent determining the overall process that must be done to achieve synthetic lightcurves, as well as what work must yet be done.


The fourth day consisted of generating the light curves for different filters, as well as the overall heating funtion for the flaring pixels.




This friday, we had a two week update presentation, and most of the fifth day was spent preparing for that. The mentioned presentation is included below.