The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is now officially taking a closer look at the Sun, the source of all Space Weather. Space Weather affects not only our lives here on Earth, but the Earth itself, and everything outside its atmosphere.  We radio hobbyists rely on space weather because of the affects space weather has on the ionosphere and on terrestrial weather.

SDO is the first satellite under the Living with a Star (LWS) program at NASA. The spacecraft is being designed to fly for five years. However, since satellites go through a lot of testing and retesting, they often keep working long past their initial mission life. SOHO for example, which was built to fly for five years, in 2010 celebrated its 15 year anniversary!

SDO is unlike any other satellite. It collects huge amounts of data everyday. In fact SDO produces enough data to fill a single CD every 36 seconds.

While many satellites share a ground system (place on the ground where they send data and photographs) and have recording systems to save the data collected until they can talk to their ground station, not so with SDO. Because SDO has no recording system and is collecting so much data, the SDO mission had to build its very OWN ground station. For this to be possible, SDO has been placed in a geosynchronous orbit. This means that it rotates at the same speed as the Earth, and is always be directly above and in constant communication with its ground station in New Mexico.

Today, May 14, 2010, the "keys" to the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) were handed over to the staff that is now delivering LIVE data and images/movies.  Providing incredible high-resolution (the highest yet of any scientific solar observatory), SDO is the newest research tool in our scientific endeavor to understand the Sun, space weather, and the Sun-Earth connection.  SDO has been called the new "Hubble Telescope" of solar research.

The "latest" images are now on display at http://prop.hfradio.org/ - and the images include views of the Sun in many more color bands than is available with SOHO and STEREO, and in vastly higher resolution than the other observatories.  Come take a look at the latest images...

http://prop.hfradio.org/

Sunspot Cycle 24 will be fun to watch with this new observatory!

The Simulation Team of the Space Environment Group at the Applied Electromagnetic Research Center, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan conducts research on numerical space weather forecasting. By using a supercomputer system, this computer power and cutting-edge numerical techniques enable them to simulate dynamic processes in the earth's magnetosphere.

NICT has achieved real-time simulation of the magnetospheric response to the solar wind. This research is beginning to reveal clues to understand when and how magnetospheric disturbances occur and evolve.

The real-time magnetosphere simulation is carried out using code developed by Prof. Tanaka. Input parameters are taken from the real-time solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field data observed routinely by the ACE satellite. Simulation results are visualized in real time.

Numerical simulations provide one of the most powerful tools in revealing dynamic phenomena in the space environment. Their success in reproducing a real-time response in the magnetosphere is the first step toward realization of the numerical space weather forecast system.

By express permission from NICT, http://prop.hfradio.org now includes resources from this real-time magnetospheric and ionospheric simulation. Please check out the new resources:

http://prop.hfradio.org/

Here are sample images (live):

Some Question the Data in the 2006 Livingston/Penn Paper

Tomas David Hood (NW7US), the director of HFRadio.org and producer/co-host of the NW7US Space Weather and Radio Propagation Podcast, has received correspondence from a number of individuals that calls into question the research discussed in Episode 4 of the Podcast.  For example:

"In the 2006 journal article, I found the last sentence of the first paragraph of Observations troubling:  1.  If no effort is made to prevent counting the same sunspot twice, one could, even subconsciously, favor sunspots that might favor one's hypothesis and 2.  If multiple counting is allowed and long-lived sunspots have different characteristics than shorter-lived sunspots, the data is skewed toward sunspots with longer lives because there are more opportunities to count these sunspots, more times.  If I were a reviewer of this paper, I would be very uncomfortable with this sentence."

Tomas asked Dr. M. Penn, one of the authors of the 2005 paper, about this issue.  Penn responds:

"As you know the Sun is highly dynamic!  The following movie from MDI on SoHO of the 2001 sunspots dramatically shows this:

http://soi.stanford.edu/press/ssu11-01/MPG/Ic.2001.mpg

Bill's observations occur only 60 days per year, so with clouds, he might have 50 snapshots of the sunspot activity during this movie.  Small pores evolve from hour to hour, and even large umbrae change from day-to-day and week-to-week.  His observation plan minimized bias by measuring every sunspot on the visible disk each day he observed.  Without continuous observations, it's impossible to tell if a particular pore has been observed already; and worse, without seeing the far-hemisphere of the Sun, it's impossible to tell even if large umbrae appearing on the eastern limb have been observed on their previous rotation.  Equally important is the fact that not all sunspots could be observed.

Selection bias was extensively tested in this and following work.  Larger sunspots tend to live longer and thus have a higher probability of being observed multiple times.  The data sets were examined to measure the behavior of different-sized spots, and each size bin showed the same time variation; large spots by themselves showed the same trends that small spots by themselves showed.

We know the sample is incomplete, but with the testing we've done we think that multiple measurements do not introduce a bias which would cause the time variation.

As far as an observer-introduced bias... Bill is internationally known as a very patient and excellent observer.  It's hard to imagine that during the course of 13 years he (consciously or not) subtly changed his sunspot selection to introduce a linear trend, and further that his personal bias would eventually agree with the fact that the next solar minimum would be longer than usual!  Furthermore, current work on automatically selected sunspots from archival data bases supports these IR observations."

Reference:

Episode 4: Disappearing Sunspots by 2015?

We're pleased to present: Episode #4 of the NW7US Space Weather and Radio Propagation Podcast.

How to Listen to This Podcast Episode

Details About This Podcast

In this episode, Amateur Radio Operator, Tomas David Hood (NW7US) discusses with Dr. Penn of the National Solar Observatory the startling yet convincing trend revealed in research of magnetic strengths of sunspots over the last thirteen years. The trend indicates a strong possibility, if the trend continues, that sunspots will disappear by the year 2015!

Additionally, space weather and propagation conditions through August are reviewed, and the outlook for this coming week is presented.

Do you have any thoughts, suggestions, comments, or questions about this podcast, or of the podcast, in general? Please use the feedback form to send your correspondence to Tomas, NW7US.

A version of this podcast will be made available in a format ready for amateur radio repeater and HF transmission in the form of an information bulletin package. Details will be posted at the main Podcast website.

Dr. Matthew Penn

Image of Dr. Matthew Penn - In this picture, Dr. Penn is working with the the NSO Array Camera, which is the workhorse infrared detector at the McMath/Pierce Solar Telescope. Penn uses it to map the magnetic fields in sunspots using sensitive infrared spectral lines, as well as for studies of the solar atmosphere.

Papers and Articles by M.Penn

New - September 2, 2009: Dr. Penn responds to a general question regarding data integrity.