Dr Suli Ma

Visiting Research Associate Professor (Jul 2023 – Jul 2024)

School of Physics and Astronomy,
Kelvin Building, University of Glasgow
G12 8QQ Scotland.

Email: Suli.Ma@glasgow.ac.uk

Biography
Dr. Suli Ma had been a PHD candidate of Yunnan Astronomical Observatory (YNAO) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) from Mar 2006 to Aug 2010 and a predoc fellow of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) from Oct 2008 to Sep 2010. She defended her thesis in Aug 2010 and after that she worked as a postdoc in CfA until the end of Aug 2011. During this period, she mainly worked with professor Jun Lin and Senior Astrophysicist Leon Golub on CMEs, EUV waves and low coronal shocks.

From Sep 2011 to Feb 2019, she taught physics at the school of science in China University of Petroleum (East China). She joined the solar radio group of National Astronomical Observatories (NAOC) of CAS leading by professor Yihua Yan in Mar 2019 and expanded her research to solar radio bursts. In Jan 2022, she moved to the National Space Science Center(NSSC) of CAS along with the group.

Now, she is a visiting researcher of University of Glasgow working with professor Eduard Kontar on solar radio bursts and particle accelerations.

ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5431-6065

Dr Sargam Mulay

16760_1556344374584507_5129376530793878259_n

July 2021 – present: Research Associate

Nov. 2019 – Jun 2021: Research Assistant
School of Physics and Astronomy,
Office 605, Kelvin Building, University of Glasgow
G12 8QQ Scotland.

Email: Sargam.Mulay@glasgow.ac.uk

Tel: +44 141 330 7111

Biography
Dr. Sargam Mulay obtained a Ph.D. in Solar Physics from the University of Cambridge, UK in 2018. She had an opportunity to work with Dr. Helen Mason and Dr. Giulio Del Zanna on the topic of solar active region jets. After completing PhD, she joined as a postdoc at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, India. She worked with Prof. Durgesh Tripathi for 1.5 years on sigmoid observations. Since 2019, she is a research assistant with Prof. Lyndsay Fletcher at the University of Glasgow, UK and she is working on spectroscopic observations of solar flares.

Research
Her research interest includes observational X-ray and UV spectroscopy, solar radiophysics, reconnection in solar flares, coronal heating, sigmoids and jets in the Solar atmosphere.

During her Ph.D., she focused on understanding the temperature structure of active region jets using data from several space-based observatories such as the SDO (AIA, HMI), Hinode (EIS, XRT), RHESSI, IRIS and WIND/Waves. Combining imaging and spectroscopic observations from multiple instruments facilitated her to measure the physical parameters of jets (temperature, electron number density, filling factor, emission measure, velocities (plane-of-sky, nonthermal and Doppler)) and study their relationship with other phenomena such as H-alpha surges, solar flares, nonthermal type-III radio bursts and soft/hard X-ray emission. This comprehensive investigation of AR jets extended our knowledge and the study provided substantial constraints for theoretical modelling of the jets and their thermodynamic nature.

Link to her Ph.D. thesis – https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/277700

During her tenure at IUCAA, she worked on the temperature structure of sigmoids during various phases of the solar flare as well as during sigmoid eruption. This study benchmarks different techniques (emission measure and filter-ratio methods) available for temperature estimation in solar coronal structures.

At the University of Glasgow, she has been studying the turbulence in the solar flares using spectroscopic observations from IRIS satellite. The research includes understanding the nature of emission from molecular hydrogen by deriving its physical properties from IRIS spectra.

ORCID and List of publications

Prof. John Brown, OBE (1947 – 2019)

johnbrown

Our colleague Prof. John Brown, OBE, was an outstanding, innovative scientist, a dedicated teacher and communicator, and a good friend and mentor to many of us in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group. He was the 10th Astronomer Royal for Scotland and was formerly Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Glasgow. His scientific achievements and accolades form a long and distinguished list, and his pioneering research into solar and stellar physics, and solar flares in particular, set the direction for much of the group’s work today. Many will have known John through his extensive work in communicating his enthusiasm for astronomy and science to a wide audience. We remember his hospitality, and his joy in music, magic, and sharing a pint and a blether with friends.

We will miss him greatly and our thoughts are with his wife, children and grandchildren.

David Millar

 

PhD Student

I am a Carnegie Trust PhD student, working with Professor Lyndsay Fletcher and studying oscillations in the Sun’s atmosphere, with particular focus on the chromosphere. I use mostly ground based imagindavidg spectro-polarimetry in conjunction with space based data to look for evidence of oscillations and pulsations during solar flare activity. I am also interested in chromospheric waves and oscillations in quiet conditions, such as sunspot oscillations.

 

ORCID

Refereed Publications

David C L Millar, Lyndsay Fletcher, Ryan O Milligan, The effect of a solar flare on chromospheric oscillationsMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 503, Issue 2, May 2021, Pages 2444–2456, DOI

Room 604
School of Physics and Astronomy
Kelvin Building
University of Glasgow
G12 8QQ
Scotland

Email: d.millar.2@research.gla.ac.uk
davidclmillar@hotmail.co.uk

Tel: +44 141 330 2960
@davidclmillar

Aaron W. Peat

I am working with Dr Nicolas Labrosse. My research is mainly concerned with solar prominences in the near ultraviolet wavelengths. I am currently working with MgII spectra from IRIS and using synthesised line profiles from NLTE code(s) to attempt to invert the atmosphere.

PhD Thesis

“Diagnostics of the thermodynamic properties of solar prominences”, Peat, A.W 2023. doi

Refereed Publications

  1. “Solar prominence diagnostics from non-LTE modelling of Mg II h&k line profiles”, Peat, A. W., Labrosse, N., Schmieder, B., and Barczynski, K. Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. 653, 2021. doi
  2. “Spectro-imagery of an active tornado-like prominence: Formation and evolution”, Barczynski, K., Schmieder, B., Peat, A. W., Labrosse, N., Mein, P., and Mein, N.,  Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. 653, 2021. doi

  3. First high resolution interferometric observation of a solar prominence with ALMA“,  Labrosse, N., Rodger, A. S., Radziszewski, K., Rudawy, P.,  Antolin, P., Fletcher, L., Levens, P. J., Peat, A. W., Schmieder, B., and Simões, P. J. A., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 513, 2022. doi

Room 604
School of Physics and Astronomy
Kelvin Building
University of Glasgow
G12 8QQ
Scotland

Email
GitHub
Orcid ID: 0000-0003-3085-2936
Tel:  +44 141 330 2960

John Armstrong

 

PhD StudentIMG_7fhlui

I am working with Prof. Lyndsay Fletcher on the implementation of machine learning algorithms in solar observations. My main focus is on flare spectropolarimetry and how machine learning techniques can aid the data analysis process for carrying out chromospheric magnetic field diagnostics in a flaring atmosphere.

I have mainly applied supervised and unsupervised deep learning models to different solar aspects:

1. Deep convolutional neural network (CNN) for solar feature detection

2. Deep learning for correcting for atmospheric seeing in solar flare observations.

3. Invertible neural network (INN) for the inversion of solar flare line profiles.

A C.V. can be found here.

Github

 

Refereed Publications

  1. “Fast Solar Image Classification Using Deep Learning and its Importance for Automation in Solar Physics”J.A. Armstrong & L. Fletcher, Solar Physics, vol. 294:80, (2019). [doi] arXiv
  2. “RADYNVERSION: Learning to Invert a Solar Flare Atmosphere with Invertible Neural Networks”, C.M.J. Osborne, J.A. Armstrong & L. Fletcher, The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 873 (2), (2019). [doi] arXiv

Other Publications

  1. “Deep learning for the Sun”, J.A. Armstrong, C.M.J. Osborne & L. Fletcher, Astronomy & Geophysics, vol. 61, issue 3, June 2020, Pages 3.34–3.39 [doi]

Room 604
School of Physics and Astronomy
Kelvin Building
University of Glasgow
G12 8QQ
Scotland

Email: j.armstrong.2@research.gla.ac.uk

Tel: +44 141 330 2960

Thomas Murat

PhD Student

t.murat.1@research.gla.ac.uk

Room 604
School of Physics and Astronomy
Kelvin Building
University of Glasgow
G12 8QQ
Scotland

Email:

Tel: +44 141 330 2960
Fax: +44 141 330 8600

Nicolina Chrysaphi

chrysaphiPhD Student

I conduct research focused on the observation and analysis of radio emissions from the Sun, under the supervision of Professor Eduard P. Kontar.  I am particularly interested in the physical mechanisms defining the morphological characteristics of Type II radio bursts which are excited by shock waves associated with Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).  I also study the radio-wave scattering effects in the solar corona to better understand the observed radio emissions.  I have utilised data from several instruments including SDO/AIA, SOHO/LASCO, GOES/XRS, and LOFAR.

Refereed Publications:

  1. Chrysaphi, N., Kontar, E. P., Holman, G. D., and Temmer, M. (2018). CME-driven Shock and Type II Solar Radio Burst Band Splitting. ApJ, 868, 79. DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aae9e5. [arXiv]
  2. Kontar, E. P., Chen, X., Chrysaphi, N., Jeffrey, N. L. S., et al. (2019). Anisotropic Radio-wave Scattering and the Interpretation of Solar Radio Emission Observations. ApJ, 884, 112. DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab40bb. [arXiv]
  3. Chrysaphi, N., Reid, H. A. S., and Kontar, E. P. (2020). First Observation of a Type II Solar Radio Burst Transitioning Between a Stationary and Drifting State. ApJ, 893, 115. DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab80c1. [arXiv]
  4. Kuznetsov, A. A., Chrysaphi, N., Kontar, E. P., and Motorina, G. (2020). Radio Echo in the Turbulent Corona and Simulations of Solar Drift-pair Radio Bursts. ApJ, 898, 94. DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aba04a. [arXiv]
  5. Chen, X., Kontar, E. P., Chrysaphi, N., Jeffrey, N. L. S., Gordovskyy, M., Yan, Y., and Tan, B. (2020). Subsecond Time Evolution of Type III Solar Radio Burst Sources at Fundamental and Harmonic Frequencies. ApJ, 905, 43. DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abc24e. [arXiv]

Authored open-source code:
1. scattering_shift.pro – Added to the SolarSoftWare (SSW) library.

Room 604
School of Physics and Astronomy
Kelvin Building
University of Glasgow
G12 8QQ
Scotland

Email: n.chrysaphi.1@research.gla.ac.uk
ORCID: 0000-0002-4389-5540

Tel: +44 141 330 2960
Fax: +44 141 330 8600

Aurora over Glasgow

On the 7th October 2015, bright aurora/northern lights were visible over Glasgow due to fast solar wind from a coronal hole on the Sun. A&A group member Dr Iain Hannah was able to photograph this aurora (shown below) and a time lapse of it is available here.

SR_DSC01242