The Sun is the ultimate driver of the physical properties and evolution of the entire Heliosphere, and can cause severe perturbations to the near-Earth space environment due to large-scale dynamic events taking place in the solar atmosphere, such as flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). Our society is becoming increasingly dependent on technological assets that can be directly damaged by these, so-called, Space Weather events. Consequently, predicting the occurrence of such events is of critical importance to minimizing their damage. Also, little is known on how the cradle of Space Weather, the solar atmosphere, is formed and maintained. For example, the mechanisms that heat the atmosphere of the Sun to multi-million degree temperatures are not known, and how the continuous outward stream of highly ionized plasma known as the solar wind is heated and accelerated is also still an open question. This project is a four-year effort to perform an upgrade to an existing corona instrument installed at the solar observatory at Mauna Loa to increase both the field of view of the solar atmosphere that can be imaged and the range of the spectrum that it can observe. The new measurements will open a new window in the observations of CMEs, allowing for the first time quantitative studies of their thermal structure, dynamics and evolution for the first time. In addition, they will help deliver the continuous, long-term measurements of plasma dynamics, magnetism and thermodynamics of the entire solar atmosphere that are needed to answer fundamental questions about the heating of the atmosphere and the origin of the solar wind.
The project will be carried out in collaboration between the University of Michigan and the High Altitude Observatory (HAO) of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, each contributing essential expertise and experience to ensure its successful completion. An important expected outcome of the effort is the creation of an integrated facility that will connect groundbreaking new observations of the solar atmosphere and solar magnetic field with cutting-edge theoretical and diagnostic tools, all of which will be made easily and readily available to the solar and space physics research community. Undergraduate students will be integrated into the project on yearlong research projects, through the University of Michigan?s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) at no cost to this project. Likewise, while not funded in this project, plans are included for graduate students at the University of Michigan to use these new data and modeling tools for their dissertations.
The Coronal Multichannel Polarimeter (CoMP), a visible light coronagraph and filter polarimeter currently deployed at Mauna Loa Solar Observatory which already routinely measures the Stokes I, Q, U, and V parameters between 1.05 and 1.38 solar radii, will be upgraded to include multiple chromospheric, transition region and coronal lines. Specifically, the Upgraded CoMP (UCoMP) instrument will extend the wavelength coverage and the number of wavelengths observed by CoMP to include visible and near-IR emission lines in the 5000-11000 Ã… range. The lines that UCoMP will observe are emitted by the quiescent and active corona in the 0.8-4.0 MK temperature range, as well as by the core of accelerating CMEs between 0.01 MK up to ≈0.5 MK. In addition, a new set of dual detectors will enable UCoMP to have nearly twice the FOV and twice the spatial resolution as compared to the existing CoMP capability. As and integral part of this effort, a joint data distribution and analysis center will be built at HAO and the University of Michigan that will distribute to the space physics community not only the data from UCoMP but also the necessary advanced tools for spectroscopic diagnostics, data analysis, and modeling.
