This three-year Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) provides $150,000 to the New Jersey Institute of Technology to advance understanding of coronal heating mechanisms in the Sun. Through a combination of multi-wavelength microwave imaging observations from the Extended Owens Valley Solar Array and 3D numerical simulations, the grantee will examine the coupling of thermal and magnetic structures...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) will support a $582,399 research project by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) to investigate the origins of "active longitudes" on the Sun's surface and their connection to the solar dynamo and coronal mass ejections. The 3-year project will utilize 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations and 17 years of observational data from the National Solar Observatory's Global Oscillation Network...
This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050), provides $265,312 to American University to address key science questions regarding particle acceleration in coronal jets and their escape into the heliosphere. The award supports an observational and theoretical study combining high-quality observations with state-of-the-art simulations. Researchers will select and analyze coronal jet events at...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $573,957 Project Grant under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) to The Trustees of Princeton University, Office of Research and Project Administration, to conduct research on the role of Alfvén wave reflection and absorption in heating the Sun's upper atmosphere, known as the solar corona. The key objectives of this 3-year project are to: 1) determine the mechanism responsible for Alfvén wave reflection, including the role of collisions; 2)...
This Project Grant award, totaling $182,730, was made by the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) to Predictive Science Incorporated, a for-profit research and analysis company located in San Diego, California. The goal of this 3-year project, running from May 1, 2025 to April 30, 2028, is to improve understanding of the Sun's corona, the hot outer layer of the solar atmosphere, by analyzing data from five total solar eclipses spanning 2015 to 2024. The research...
This $300,519 National Science Foundation project grant supports research and outreach activities to study the parametric decay instability mechanism's potential role in solar corona heating. Funded under the Geosciences program, which supports basic research to improve understanding of Earth's integrated systems, the two-year award to New Mexico Consortium will analyze observational data and conduct numerical simulations. Postdoctoral researchers and undergraduate students at Columbia...
This $303,253 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) to Montana State University aims to advance the understanding of solar flare heating mechanisms. The research team will conduct high-cadence, high-resolution observations of solar flares using the Goode Solar Telescope and upcoming X-ray instruments to study the temporal, spatial, and magnetic structures of the fundamental energy release processes, known as "elementary bursts."...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) aims to improve understanding of the Sun's corona, the hot outermost layer of the solar atmosphere, by analyzing data from total solar eclipses. The $385,959 award to the Wentworth Institute of Technology will fund the analysis of imaging data from five total solar eclipses between 2015 and 2024 to study the coronal electron temperature, electron density, and magnetic field structure. This...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) will provide $824,005 to support the operation and use of the Owens Valley Solar Arrays, a world-class solar radio telescope facility, from March 15, 2025 to February 28, 2030. The project will enable routine radio observations of solar activity, including solar flares, active regions, and coronal holes, to advance understanding of the underlying magnetic energy release, particle acceleration, and...
This $105,935 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) supports collaborative research on plasma turbulence and heating in the solar chromosphere. The primary awardee, the SETI Institute, will conduct theoretical analysis, computer simulations, and observations using data from NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) and Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) to test the hypothesis that small-scale plasma processes cause heating in the...
GOAL AND OBJECTIVES THE GOAL OF THIS PROPOSAL IS TO ANSWER THE QUESTION - HOW AND WHY DOES THE SUN VARY. RECENT OBSERVATIONS IN EXTREME ULTRA-VIOLET WAVELENGTHS HAVE SHOWN THAT THE CORONA OSCILLATES AT MANY DIFFERENT SPATIAL SIZES AND TEMPORAL FREQUENCIES. HOWEVER MUCH REMAINS UNKNOWN ABOUT MANY OF THESE OSCILLATIONS; THEY ARE INTERMITTENT FOR UNKNOWN REASONS APPEAR ON SOME CORONAL FEATURES AND NOT ON OTHER SIMILAR NEIGHBORING FEATURES AND MAY (OR MAY NOT) BE MAGNETOHYRODYNAMIC WAVE MODES. DEFINITIVE CAUSES OF THE STRUCTURE AND ORIGINS OF THESE OSCILLATIONS IS STILL LARGELY LACKING. WE PROPOSE TO STUDY HOW AND WHY FEATURESIN THE CORONA OSCILLATE AND IF THEY OSCILLATE AS IDENTIFIABLE WAVE MODES. WE WILL MAKE USE OF AUTOMATED DETECTION AND CLASSIFICATION ALGORITHMS TO TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF THE LARGE VOLUME OF SDO-AIA DATA AVAILABLE. FIRST WE WILL MEASURE THE OSCILLATION CONTENT OFDIFFERENT PHYSICAL REGIONS ON THE SUN IN SDO AIA DATA. WE WILL DO THIS USING THREE DIFFERENT AUTOMATED OSCILLATION DETECTION ALGORITHMS (DEVELOPED PREVIOUSLY) TO VALIDATE THE RESULTS. THE MEASURED OSCILLATION CONTENT WILL BE CORRELATED WITH OTHER MEASURES OF THOSE REGIONS SUCH AS AREA TOTAL UNSIGNED MAGNETIC FLUX AND AGE TO OBTAIN BASIC INFORMATION ON THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS NECESSARY FOR AN OSCILLATION TO OCCUR BASIC INFORMATION THAT HAS AS YET NOT BEEN OBTAINED. WE WILL EXTRACT ALL THIS CONTENT IN EACH AIA PASSBAND. FURTHER WEWILL ROUTINELY MEASURE THE CORONAL OSCILLATION CONTENT OF THE SUN IN THE CURRENT SOLAR CYCLE AND PROVIDE THOSE MEASUREMENTS ONLINE. SECOND WE NEED TO KNOW THE PHYSICAL SIZE OF THE COHERENT OSCILLATING STRUCTURE AND WHAT KIND OF STRUCTURE THE OSCILLATIONS OCCUR ON. WE WILL DO THIS BY IMPLEMENTING PIXEL GROUPING AND OSCILLATORY SIGNAL COHERENCE ALGORITHMS TO DETECT COHERENTLY OSCILLATING STRUCTURES. FURTHER WE WILL DEVELOP A 3D WAVELET ALGORITHM AND A CURVELET-BASED TEXTURE ANALYSIS THAT CAN DISTINGUISH BETWEEN NARROW AND EXTENDED CURVILINEAR FEATURES SUCH AS CORONAL LOOPS AND NON-LOOP EMISSION ON THE SUN. THIS WILL ALLOW US TO IDENTIFY LOOP-LIKE FEATURES AT MULTIPLE LENGTH-SCALES (LARGE LOOPS IN ACTIVE REGIONS SMALL LOOPS IN CORONAL HOLES AND QUIET SUN) AND OTHER TYPES OF EMISSION SUCH AS PLAGE OR MOSS IN EACH AIA PASSBAND. THIRD WE WILL STUDY OF ORIGINS OF LONGITUDINAL OSCILLATIONS AND FLARE-INDUCED KINK WAVES. THE COMBINATION OF AUTOMATED DETECTION OF THE OSCILLATIONS AND THE STRUCTURE SUPPORTING THESE OSCILLATIONS AS MEASURED IN EACH OF THE SDO PASSBANDS WILL ALLOW US TO TEST THEORIES OF OSCILLATION PROPAGATION CORONAL HEATING AND ENERGY DECAY MECHANISMS IN THE SOLARATMOSPHERE. RELEVANCE TO NASA THIS PROPOSAL ADDRESSES THE SCIENCE STRATEGIC GOAL 2 TO EXPAND SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING OF THE EARTH AND THE UNIVERSE IN WHICH WE LIVE OUTCOME 2.2 TO UNDERSTAND THE SUN AND ITS INTERACTIONS WITH EARTH AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM OFTHE 2011 NASA STRATEGIC PLAN AND SCIENCE QUESTION WHAT CAUSES THE SUN TO VARY OBJECTIVE UNDERSTAND THE FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICAL PROCESSES OF THE SPACE ENVIRONMENT FROM THE SUN TO EARTH TO OTHER PLANETS AND BEYOND TO THE INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM OF THE 2010 SCIENCE PLAN FOR NASA S SCIENCE MISSION DIRECTORATE.