|
UND Solar Astronomy and Physics Research
Solar astronomy and physics research and education at the University of North Dakota began in 2009 with a $50,000 grant to Dr. Paul Hardersen from the North Dakota NASA Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). This effort funded two Graduate Research Assistants (Matthew Voigt, Beth Zak) and began two research projects involving the intrinsic study of sunspot rotations and coronal X-ray bright points. Since then, both Mr. Voigt and Svetlana Shkolyar, another M.S. student in this effort, successfully defended their related M.S. thesis projects in solar research. Ms. Zak is conducting a non-thesis project supporting the sunspot research. In June 2011, Dr. Paul Hardersen, Matthew Voigt, and Rakesh Nath became the first UND contingent to attend a AAS Solar Physics Division (SPD) meeting in Las Cruces, NM. Dr. Hardersen and Mr. Voigt presented posters on their research and both are in the process of turning their research results into papers that will be submitted to The Astrophysical Journal later in 2011 or early in 2012. Mr. Nath’s M.S. thesis project will involve commissioning a high quality, 0.42-Å DayStar Filters (http://www.daystarfilters.com/  ) Hydrogen-alpha filter using Internet Observatory #2. The goals of this thesis are to begin solar patrol monitoring with this filter using Internet Observatory #2, define what solar chromospheric features can be studied with the resulting imagery, and apply a variety of image processing techniques to produce the highest quality images possible.
Current and future research projects are underway or in the planning stages with Dr. K.S. Balasubramaniam (http://www.nso.edu/staff/bala/ ) at the USAF Research Laboratory and with Dr. Jason Jackiewicz at New Mexico State University (http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/dept/html/directory.faculty.jasonj.shtml ).
Long-term term plans include efforts to be a part of a university consortium to operate the solar observatories at Sacramento Peak, New Mexico, when the National Solar Observatory (NSO) staff departs for their new home when the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) begins operations. This will be the first time UND has ever been a part of an astronomical consortium and will provide faculty and students with direct access to world-class instrumentation and facilities (http://nsosp.nso.edu/ ).
|
||||||||||||||||||||
John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences - Department of Space Studies - Observatories
