Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21914409w&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #144.09
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Solar magnetic fields are responsible for the appearance of the solar atmosphere. These magnetic fields are non-uniform, and are strongest over sunspots. Magnetic fields are thought to cause energetic phenomena such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which can have damaging consequences in the near-Earth space environment and high latitude regions, providing practical in addition to scientific reasons to study them. Current instrumentation for observations of solar magnetic fields use scanning slit spectrograph or tunable filter, which allow us to resolve the time evolution of the fields to the scale of minutes or longer. We are constructing a new instrument, SPIES, based on a large-format (32 x 64) fiber-optic integral field unit (IFU). The fiber-optic IFU allows us to observe over two spatial dimensions and one spectral dimension simultaneously rather than in steps, thus allowing for resolution of the time evolution to the level of seconds. Due to fiber modal noise and small thermal drift of the instrument over time, flat-fielding of the intensity spectra from the discrete fiber-optic 'slits' becomes time dependent. An observing scheme that records time-sensitive flat-fields was devised for SPIES. We will present preliminary analysis of the full-Stokes polarization spectra of a sunspot obtained with SPIES over a 90 minute time span. This work was conducted through a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) position at the University of Hawai'i's Institute for Astronomy and was funded by the NSF.
Lin Hainan
Weis Andrew
No associations
LandOfFree
SPIES: Spectropolarimetric Imager for Energetic Sun does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with SPIES: Spectropolarimetric Imager for Energetic Sun, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and SPIES: Spectropolarimetric Imager for Energetic Sun will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1576088