High Resolution Studies of Solar Activity and Space Weather

自1997年7月1日以来，新泽西理工学院（NJIT）一直在运行大熊太阳天文台（BBSO）。目前的三年NSF拨款开始于2001年3月1日，该拨款为BBSO提供主要的骨干支持。BBSO望远镜的时间和数据对所有人开放。在NSF资助的头两年里，天文台已经发表了100多篇科学论文。目前，PI正在为BBSO构建并实施高阶自适应光学系统，并已开始为BBSO构建新的1.6 m净口径离轴望远镜。这个提议的为期三年的太阳物理研究项目将涵盖太阳周期23的衰变阶段。该计划将强调对磁场和太阳大气进行高分辨率和高节奏的持续研究——这是BBSO最适合的工作。观测台工作人员还计划参与仪器开发，以便更好地进行拟议的高分辨率和/或高节奏观测。PI指出，所提出的科学工作可以用目前的BBSO仪器和望远镜完成，但使用新的仪器和望远镜将产生更多的探测结果。所有正在进行的仪器项目都将在本提案所涵盖的时间之前或早期完成——除了1.6望远镜项目，这不是这里所提议的科学所需要的，因为新的望远镜要到提议工作的后期才会完成。

The New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) has been operating Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) since July 1, 1997. The current three-year NSF grant started on March 1, 2001, and this grant provides primary, backbone support for BBSO. BBSO telescope time and data are available to all. The observatory has produced over 100 scientific papers under the first two years of this NSF support. At present, the PI is building and implementing a high-order adaptive optics system for BBSO, and he has begun to build a new 1.6-m clear aperture, off-axis telescope for BBSO.This proposed three-year program of solar physics research at BBSO would cover the decaying phase of solar cycle 23. The program would emphasize sustained campaigns of high resolution and high cadence studies of magnetic fields and the solar atmosphere - efforts for which BBSO is ideally suited. BBSO staff also plans to engage in instrument development to better carry out the proposed high resolution and/or high cadence observations. The PI notes that the scientific work proposed can be done with the current BBSO instrumentation and telescope, but would yield more probing results with the new instrumentation and telescope. All on-going instrumentation projects would be completed before, or early in, the period covered by this proposal - except the 1.6 telescope project, which is not required for the science proposed here, because the new telescope would not be completed until late in the period of the proposed work.