 | Magnetic fields on the sun's surface, as mapped by the Helioseismic Magnetic Imager (HMI) on SDO. White and black trace opposite magnetic polarities. A sunspot, about the size of Earth, is indicated by the large white region. Credit: NASA/SDO/HMI |
|  | A loop of plasma erupting from the sun's surface in 2010 March as observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), one of the three instruments on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA |
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| NWRA is playing a large supporting role in NASA's recently deployed
Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO),
which observes the Sun nearly continuously and returns a terabyte of data a day.
Co-Investigators on the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI), one of
three instruments on SDO, include
NWRA Scientists Doug Braun, KD Leka, Charlie Lindsey, and the late
Tom Metcalf. The HMI is designed to study oscillations and the
magnetic field at the solar surface. Other NWRA participants, providing analysis tools
and software to the HMI project, include scientists Graham Barnes, Aaron Birch, Ashley Crouch,
Martin Woodard, support engineer Eric Wagner, and technical manager Orion Poplawski.
NWRA is also the lead institution, under PI Braun, for one of two NASA SDO Science Center
awards and is tasked with developing the next generation of analysis tools for probing the
subsurface structure of sunspots. |
