Update: The weather forecast for Friday morning in Glasgow is currently cloudy/variable but we will be out in force hoping for gaps in the clouds.

We also have a live feed of the eclipse from the University of Glasgow Observatory.

A rare partial solar eclipse will be viewable in Glasgow on Friday March 20th, with the maximum eclipse (the moon covering 94% of the Sun) occurring at 09:34am.

We at the University of Glasgow will be hosting (weather permitting) eclipse viewing areas where anyone can come along to safely* see the eclipse through our telescopes and viewers, with experts on hand to explain what is happening. These will be located at the Flag pole/South Front of the main University building and near the entrance to the Fraser building and Library between the times of the eclipse (08:30am to 10:43am), see the poster/map.

For more information please contact Iain Hannah.

*Do not look directly at the Sun with you naked eyes or through an unfiltered telescope/binoculars even during the eclipse. Only use specially designed filters/glasses (not sunglasses) or a pinhole or projection method to observe the eclipse. More information to safely view an eclipse is available here, this guide from the Royal Astronomical Society [pdf], or from the BBC’s Stargazing Live [pdf].

Graham Kerr, a PhD student in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group, has won the School of Physics and Astronomy’s Thomson Prize for his second year report on Observations and Modelling of Solar Chromospheric Flares. Well done Graham!

Locations of optical sources in a white light flare, colour coded by time (from Kerr & Fletcher 2014)

The School of Physics and Astronomy has joined the UK Consortium for the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope currently being constructed on the summit of Haleakala mountain in Hawai’i. This 4m diameter telescope will address fundamental questions at the core of contemporary solar physics. It will do this via high-speed (sub-second) imaging, spectroscopic and magnetic measurements of the solar photosphere, chromosphere and corona. DKIST will be mainly funded by the US National Science Foundation. The UK DKIST Consortium, funded also by the STFC and in kind by Andor Technology, exists to design and build the cameras for 4 DKIST instruments, develop processing and data analysis tools, and support UK observing proposals.

Rendering of DKIST dome. Image: NSO/NSF/AURA

Congratulations to David Graham, whose paper “The Emission Measure Distribution of Impulsive Phase Flare Footpoints“, published while he was a PhD student in the A&A group, has won this year’s Robert Cormack Bequest Postgraduate Prize. This prize, awarded annually by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, is for the best nominated paper accepted for publication in 2013/14 with a postgraduate in a Scottish Institution as prime author. David gets a cheque for a helpful sum, and an invitation to speak to the annual Cormack Astronomy Meeting in November.

The paper investigates the temperature distribution of the plasma produced in the lower atmosphere (footpoints) of a flare during the phase of primary energy injection, finding a distribution peaking at 10MK and with a slope consistent with thermal conduction. It is the first time that the properties of flare footpoints have been investigated in this way. Co-authors were Iain G. Hannah, Lyndsay Fletcher (both GU) and Ryan O. Milligan (Queen’s University Belfast)

Well done David!

THEMIS telescope building

Dr Nicolas Labrosse and PhD student Peter Levens are leading an international team which has been awarded 20 days of observing time with THEMIS as part of the SOLARNET Transnational Access and Service Programme.

These observations will be part of a larger observing campaign in coordination with other instruments, including more ground-based observatories (Solar Tower of Observatoire de Meudon, Fuxian Solar Observatory) and satellites (SDO, Hinode, IRIS).

The objective is the measurement of magnetic fields in prominences and tornadoes, exploiting the excellent spectro-polarimetric capabilities of THEMIS in the He D3 line to infer the magnetic field vector. These phenomena represent unique examples of the small-scale coupling between magnetic field and plasma in environments with distinct dynamical behaviour. As such they represent key case studies for deepening our understanding of the Sun.

Peter Levens is pointing the telescope on an attractive target.

Some pictures of their trip can be found here.

Graham Kerr, a second year Astronomy and Astrophysics PhD student has won the Hunter-Cumming Prize for his first year work, presented in his report on ‘Observations and Modelling of Solar Chromospheric Flares’. Graham has been working on observations of solar flares in the optical part of the spectrum, using data from the Hinode spacecraft to deduce the temperature and energy content of ‘white light’ flares. He has recently begun running radiation hydrodynamic simulations, to help interpret the behaviour that is observed. Congratulations Graham!

February 7-10th 2014 saw the annual Astronomy 2 observing trip to the Burn House, near Edzell.

Despite some poor weather, both night and day/solar observing were achieved. And more importantly the weekend is booked for the February 2015 trip.

The A&A group receives a major boost with funding from the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) for space-related research.

A powerful X-class flare observed by Hinode’s Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on Dec. 13, 2006

The F-CHROMA project (Flare CHRomospheres: Observations, Models and Archives) will bring together experts from seven institutions to collect, synthesise and analyse data from satellite and earthbound observations of solar flares. Solar flares are energetic outbursts of solar radiation which span the whole electromagnetic spectrum. Mid-sized flares can release energy equivalent to a hundred million megatons of TNT in just a few minutes, most of which ultimately turns into electromagnetic radiation. This radiation is emitted primarily by a thin, and complicated, part of the Sun’s atmosphere called the chromosphere.

Lyndsay Fletcher, Principal Investigator, said that this project will allow the team to combine ultra-high detail observation of solar flare events with advanced theoretical and computational modeling to shed light on the way a flare’s energy is stored, released, and converted into other forms.

The outcomes of F-CHROMA will be used to inform preparations for major forthcoming projects including the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope which will see first light in 2019 in Hawai’i and ESA’s Solar Orbiter Mission which is expected to start beaming back solar images and spectra from its orbit in the inner solar system at around the same time.

F-CHROMA is one of two projects led by the University of Glasgow receiving funding from the European Commission.

Dr Nic Bian (Glasgow) and a colleague from the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Irkutsk at the Siberian Solar Radio Telescope.

Galina Motorina, a winner of the all-Russia competition, was awarded a scholarship of the President of the Russian Federation to pursue solar flare research in Glasgow. The awards are for PhD students who “achieved considerable success in fundamental or applied researches”.

Ionospheric perturbations strongly affect radio propagation, and can produce rather peculiar patterns in the dynamic spectra of solar radio emission (for details – see the paper Meyer-Vernet, N., Daigne, G., and Lecacheux, A., Astronomy and Astrophysics, 1981). Such unusual patterns can be seen in Glasgow radio data as well – see images and the radio data from other radio observatories (CALLISTO status report/news letter #47):