Week 1 Log

Monday, June 9th, 2014 - Friday, June 13th, 2014

My first week in Montana served as an introduction to the program and to my specific research project. There were daily IDL lectures given by Chris Lowder, a graduate student here at MSU. I got my computer set up on the MSU system. I also met with Andrés daily to discuss the project and to go over the IDL code he wrote that I will be working with. He had me make some modifications to the code, both as an exercise to learn how the code operates and to improve the program's interface.

There were also lectures on observing the Sun (David McKenzie), the solar cycle (Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo), and the Sun as a star (Dana Longcope).

At the end of the week I wrote a function to take the magnetogram images and make a movie out of them. This movie shows the active regions the IDL code detected and shows their movement across the visible face of the Sun as our star rotates.