9515468 Zirin This award will support travel over a two year period to enable Dr. Harold Zirin from the Department of Solar Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology to conduct collaborative research with Prof. Peter R. Wilson of the School of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of Sydney. The cooperative research will focus on the study of solar polar magnetic fields. The Sun's polar fields are important because they are the dominant feature acting far from the sun in interplanetary space. The behavior of the solar polar magnetic fields is one of the remarkable aspects of the sunspot cycle, and of great importance to solar-terrestrial relations. The project seeks to team up an ongoing program of polar observations conducted at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in the United States and an analysis program at the University of Sydney where needed software has already been developed. The combination of investigators should result in new insights in the interpretation of the observational data already collected. The work in Australia is supported through the Department of Industry, Science and Tourism (DIST).
