- Tuesday, October 25, 2022
- 3:15 PM–3:15 PM
- SB 110
Calvin Univeristy's Physics & Astronomy Department welcomes Bryce Walbridge's presentation: "A New Universal Polarization Resolving Software Package for Solar Coronal and Heliospheric Observations.
On Tuesday, October 25 at 3:15 you are cordially invited to attend the presentation by Bryce Walbridge about the research he conducted in the summer in Colorado. His presentation is entitled: "A New Universal Polarization Resolving Software Package for Solar Coronal and Heliospheric Observations" Join us for refreshments in SB 157 at 3:00 pm and the lecture in SB110 at 3:15 p.m.
Abstract: A variety of different systems are used to characterize the degree of polarization of the visible solar corona, most prominently total brightness (B) and polarized brightness (pB). Such polarization observations allow us to analyze the background solar wind, the structure of coronal mass ejections, and their kinematics as they propagate through the heliosphere. In particular, the polarization properties of Thomson scattering yield information about the 3D location of dense features in the heliosphere. Many polarimetric instruments, such as the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) COR coronagraphs, use a symmetric three-polarizer measurement and representation system to derive the (B, pB) pair or Stokes parameters via polarization resolving software. However, only instrument-specific resolvers are available; no universal resolver exists in the commonly used Python environment. The upcoming Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) NASA mission is one such set of instruments that will rely on a polarization resolver. Here we present a universal, open-source polarization resolver developed in Python with the PUNCH mission in mind. This resolver is capable of converting three-polarizer measurements to pB and B and vice versa. We show the potential of the package using existing data from the STEREO mission. We test the robustness of the resolver using synthetic, forward-modeled data with the dimensions and characteristics of the PUNCH datasets. The synthetic data is produced with different noise contributions to test the ability of the resolver to construct pB and B datasets under increasingly noisy conditions and assess when data is unusable. This polarization resolver shows promise to advance our understanding of the Sun and solar wind.
Location details
Science Building 110
