NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

> View Larger Since launch, engineers have been conducting testing and verification of the spacecraft’s components. SDO will provide images with clarity 10 times better than high-definition television and will return more comprehensive science data faster than any other solar observing spacecraft.

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SDO AAS Topics, Speakers/Presenters

• Solar Dynamics Observatory: Introduction & Status, W. Dean Pesnell (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)
• Magnetic Coupling of Small- and Large-Scale Solar Features, Karel Schrijver (Lockheed Martin)
• Atmospheric Imaging Assembly Reveals Little Flares with Big Effects, Alan Title (Lockheed Martin)
• The Heliophysics Knowledge Base and the Sun Today Website, Neal Hurlburt (Lockheed Martin)

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Images and Multimedia in Support of the AAS Briefing

Solar Dynamics Observatory: Introduction & Status
W. Dean Pesnell (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

Remarks

I am Dean Pesnell, the Project Scientist of SDO. We are here today to describe some of the results from our early looks at the data from SDO.

SDO became an operating mission on May 14, 2010. This means the scientists are now looking at the SDO data stream to make discoveries and understand how the Sun behaves.

SDO is the first mission in NASA’s Living With a Star Program. It will study the Sun and how the Sun affects our modern life more and more. Most of those effects come from the ever-changing magnetic field of the Sun. SDO is designed to study that magnetic field, from its’ creation to its destruction by solar flares and coronal mass ejections, and how it affects the Earth.

The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) was built for SDO by Lockheed Martin.

AIA records extraordinary full-disk images of the Sun corona and chromosphere at a pace and with more channels than ever achieved. This will allow us to zoom in on small regions and see far more detail in time and space. AIA is designed to return high-res. versions of the entire disk, allowing us to zoom in on any part we want. By looking at entire Sun we can see how one part of the Sun affects another. You can then zoom in to measure the changes in great detail.

We are watching the butterfly effect in action on the Sun.

Karel Schrijver from Lockheed Martin, the Princpal Scientist for AIA, will tell us about the Sun’s million Kelvin corona and explain what we are seeing in the AIA data. Karel?

Today we have Karel Schrijver, Alan Title, and Neal Hurlburt to describe how small events at one point on the Sun can change the Sun at far-away points. Karel will describe why this important, Alan will show AIA data illustrates the long-range connections on the Sun, and Neal will tell us how to look for events in the AIA data.

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Magnetic Coupling of Small- and Large-Scale Solar Features
Karel Schrijver (Lockheed Martin)

	Video of presenter's PDF presentation; Coupling of Large and Small Solar Events › View video (125 MB)
	A false-color image sequence of the solar corona taken by SDO’s AIA. The images combine data from three AIA channels sensitive to light emitted by gas at different temperatures: red, green, and blue at 2, 1.5, and 1 million degrees, respectively. The images span one day on the Sun, and follow a region against the Sun’s slow rotation. › View video (18 MB)
	A model magnetic field. For randomly positioned field concentrations as in the quiet Sun, the magnetic field was computed, and traced by select field lines (that would light up as ‘loops’ in coronal images as taken by SDO’s AIA). In this computer model, only two sources near the center grow in strength; the model shows how even distant field can respond to such a localized change in the surface magnetic field. Visualization by Karel Schrijver › View video (61 MB)
	A model magnetic field as on the preceding slide, but now the signal of the field change propagates relatively slowly outward from the center. In the real solar coronal magnetic field, all sources would be evolving at their own pace, and the signal propagation speed would depend on both the magnetic field and on the density of the coronal gases. Visualization by Karel Schrijver. › View video (57 MB)

› Download presenter's pdf (12 MB)

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Atmospheric Imaging Assembly Reveals Little Flares with Big Effects
Alan Title (Lockheed Martin)

	AIA on Spacecraft just before launch › View larger
	AIA at LMSAL just before delivery › View larger
	AIA telescope and wavelengths › View larger
	Composite of Fe IX, Fe XII, Fe XVI › View larger Still image pan-down video of the Sun taken by SDO/AIA on May 4, 2010. > View movie (1.9 MB) Video of top half of the Sun taken by SDO/AIA on April 8, 2010, followed by zoom of active area. > View movie (7 MB)
	White light (HMI), 5850K › View larger
	Ultra Violet (HMI), 1700 angstrom, 5850K › View larger
	Magnetogram (HMI) › View larger
	Helium II 304 angstroms, 50,000K › View larger
	Fe IX 171 angstroms, approx. 1,000,000K › View larger
	Fe XII 913 angstroms, approx. 1,600,000K › View larger
	Fe XVI 335 angstroms, approx. 2,200,000K › View larger
	Fe XVIII 94 angstroms, 7,000,000K › View larger
	304 angstroms, He II, 60s > View movie (1.9 MB)
	193 angstroms, Fe XII, 60s > View movie (1.9 MB)
	304, He II, 60s > View movie (0.3 MB)
	193 angstroms, Fe XII, 60s > View movie (0.9 MB)
	304 angstroms, He II, 12s > View movie (3.7 MB)
	193 angstroms, Fe XII, 12s > View movie (1.4 MB)
	304 angstroms, He II, 48s > View movie (1 MB)
	193 angstroms, Fe XII, 48s > View movie (1 MB)
	193 angstroms, Fe XII, 96s > View movie (0.5 MB)
	304 angstroms, He II, 48s > View movie (4.5 MB)
	304 angstroms, He II, 48s > View movie (4.3 MB)
	171 angstroms, Fe IX, 48s > View movie (4.8 MB)
	171 angstroms, Fe IX, 48s > View movie (4.5 MB)

› Download presenter's pdf (44 MB)

› Download all videos in single file (169 MB)

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The Heliophysics Knowledge Base and the Sun Today Website
Neal Hurlburt (Lockheed Martin)

	Figure 1: (title slide) The iSolSearch client, http://lmsal.com/hek/hek_isolsearch.html, interacts with various HEK registries to present a unified view of events and available data. › View larger
	Figure 2: About the Heliophysics Events Knowledgebase (HEK) › View larger
	Figure 3: HEK Components include the Event and Coverage Registries (HER, HCR), Inspection & Analysis Tools, Event Identification System and Movie Processing. Event services enable web clients to interact with the HEK and use the results to request data from the JSOC at Stanford. › View larger
	Figure 4: HiPerSpace data wall controlled by EVACS/Panorama. › View larger
	Figure 5: The AIA SunToday website displays the current state of events on the sun. These can guide researchers and others to more detailed descriptions and access to associated SDO data. › View larger
	Figure 6: Researchers request custom data using the time and space intervals recommended by the HEK. These requests are passed to Stanford University to be extracted from the SDO archive there. › View larger
	Figure 7: Link to Video - A short tutorial using the tools developed to use the HEK. › View larger › View tutorial video (16 MB)

› Download presenter's pdf (0.8 MB)

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