UCLan and NASA to share an avalanche of secrets from the Sun

The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) today announced its role in a major international team that will shine new light on the Sun’s mysteries like never before. On 11th February 2010*, NASA will launch a new solar observing satellite named the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) which will study the Sun’s magnetic field and corona, to find out what governs changes in the Sun’s activity and thus how that activity affects Planet Earth.

The images of the Sun captured by SDO will be equivalent to ten times the quality of high definition television. The satellite’s telescopes will take 80 of these high quality images every minute, 24 hours a day, thus generating the equivalent of 1.5 terabytes of data daily. SDO will be launched from Cape Canaveral on Thursday 11th February 2010 at 15:23 GMT. UCLan is the only UK institution that will be collaborating closely with NASA and its international partners to investigate, store, manage and share these images with the European scientific and academic community. The tidal wave of information that will flow through UCLan is equivalent in size to downloading half a million iTunes songs a day.

Dr Robert Walsh, UCLan Project Leader and University Director of Research, said: ‘UCLan is the only university in the UK to be part of the data distribution for this major international project: this is a clear demonstration of the growing international reputation of our astrophysics institute. SDO will be beaming back to Earth 150 million bits of data per second, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; a unique torrent of information, a large fraction of which will be managed by our team in Preston. We should start to receive the SDO’s first images during the spring and their unparalleled clarity will help us to reveal and unravel the mysteries of the Sun’.

Dr Dean Pesnell, SDO Project Scientist at NASA, said: ‘The SDO project is an unprecedented opportunity to build a deeper understanding of the Sun and the impact of solar activity on the Solar System including Earth. SDO will reveal the underlying physics of solar variability. I am delighted to be working with Dr Walsh and his team at UCLan as part of an international collaboration to share the data from this unique mission with the scientific community in the UK and across Europe.’

During its five-year mission, SDO will study the causes of severe space weather, how solar activity evolves and the impact of these solar variations on space missions, aircraft, satellite communications, navigation system and even the supply of electrical power to our homes.

Further information

*The launch may be subject to delay.

The NASA SDO website can be found here.

The launch of SDO will be broadcast live on NASA TV.

On Tuesday 9th February at 3:00 pm, Dr Robert Walsh will give a presentation introducing the science of SDO and UCLan’s involvement in the mission; the location will be Harris Building, Room H307 (Harris Building is on Corporation St). On Thursday 11th February UCLan will host a launch event starting at 3:15 pm in the Mitchell and Kenyon Cinema, Foster Building, during which the launch will be broadcast live. Scientists involved in the UCLan SDO project will be present at both events will be available for comment. A map of UCLan can be found here.

UCLan will be working alongside an international team including: USA: NASA; Stanford University; Lockheed Martin Solar Astrophysical Laboratory; Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory; Europe: Royal Observatory Belgium; ISAS, France; Trinty College, Dublin

The Solar Dynamics Observatory has three instrument packages: The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) will image the solar atmosphere in multiple wavelengths of light which can only be observed from space because they are completely blocked out by Earth’s atmosphere. It is this instrument that UCLan will be focusing upon. The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) will peer into the sun and map the Sun’s magnetic fields at the solar surface, as well as the plasma flows that generate magnetic fields deep in the Sun?s interior. The Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE) will measure how much energy the sun emits at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths.

The UCLan SDO project is acollaboration between the Jeremiah Horrocks Institute and the Learning & Information Services section at the University.

Images

We have included a sample of images associated with this project in our album.

• 
  The Sun viewed by the EIT instrument on board the SOHO spacecraft. The image is taken through the 304 Angstrom passband. Credit: NASA/ESA SOHO EIT.
  
  Views of the Sun taken by the STEREO spacecraft on December 4th, 2006. These false colour images are taken in 4 EUV filters (wavelengths) that reveal layers at different temperatures in the solar corona. SDO/AIA will image the Sun in 8 wavelengths simultaneously and at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. Credit: NASA STEREO/EUVI.
• 
  A solar flare captured by the Solar Optical Telescope on board the Hinode spacecraft, on December 13th, 2006. The exceptional time resolution of the SDO instrumentation will provide scientists with higly detailed movies of solar flares. Credit: JAXA/NASA Hinode.
  
  The SDO spacecraft, carrying the AIA, HMI and EVE instruments. The spacecraft weights 3100 kg and spans 6.25 m. It is powered by solar panels and uses two high-gain antennas to transmit about 1.5 TB of data back to Earth each day. Credit: NASA SDO.
• 
  Comparison of the image resolution of current (SOHO/EIT) instruments (left) with the predicted SDO/AIA instrument (right). The image is taken through the 171 Angstrom passband. SDO will provide full disk images at a superior spatial resolution than has previously been available. The predicted image uses mosaic data from the TRACE satellite.