SEI: Mining Solar Images to Support Astrophysics Research

日冕加热问题是天体物理学中存在时间最长的未解之谜。沿环长的温度分布的测量可用于支持或消除各种类型的日冕温度模型。日冕环的温度分析是一门最先进的天文学。为了取得进展，科学分析需要由美国宇航局/欧洲航天局名为SOHO(太阳和日光层天文台)的航天器上的极端紫外线成像望远镜(EIT)观测到的10个(A阶段)和100个(B阶段)环路的数据集。EIT、TRACE和SXT信息的组合提供了一个强大的数据集，它将产生关于各种日冕环结构的等离子体参数的前所未有的详细信息。完成这个项目的最大障碍是把数据集放在一起。在其6年(还在继续)的任务中，EIT已经拍摄了超过30万张照片。到目前为止，寻找有趣的图像(带有日冕环)是这个项目最耗时的方面。。目前，这一过程是手工进行的，因此非常繁琐，阻碍了这一领域的科学进步。计划在几年后在NASA的太阳动力学天文台发射的下一代“EIT”Magite，应该能够在大约4天内拍摄30万张图像，需要最先进的技术来筛选海量数据来支持科学发现。对太阳图像挖掘的贡献有可能加速太阳物理的科学发现，以及其他依赖于海量图像数据库的应用程序。推进太阳物理学最先进水平的研究将产生重大影响，原因如下：(I)气候联系：太阳是地球上生命的光和热的来源。科学家们努力了解它是如何工作的，为什么会变化，以及这些变化是如何影响地球的，(Ii)空间天气：太阳是太阳风的来源。太阳风中的扰动动摇了地球的磁场，并将能量输送到辐射带，可能会改变卫星的轨道，缩短任务寿命，导致地球上的电力激增和停电，因此需要预测。(3)太阳作为物理实验室：太阳通过核聚变产生能量，科学家们几十年来一直在努力通过在强磁场中使用热等离子体来重现这一过程。太阳天文学的很大一部分涉及到在类似条件下观察和理解等离子体。学生们积极参与到研究项目中来。

The Coronal Heating Problem is the longest standing unsolved mystery in astrophysics. Measurements of the temperature distribution along the loop length can be used to support or eliminate various classes of coronal temperature models. The temperature analysis of coronal loops is a state-of-the-art astronomy. In order to make progress, scientific analysis requires a data set of 10 (phase A) and then 100 (Phase B) loops observed by the Extreme UV Imaging Telescope (EIT) aboard the NASA/European Space Agency spacecraft called SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory). The combination of EIT, TRACE, and SXT information provides a powerful data set that will yield unprecedented detail on the plasma parameters of a variety of coronal loop structures. The biggest obstacle to completing this project is putting the data set together. EIT has taken over 300,000 images during its 6-year (and counting) mission. The search for interesting images (with coronal loops) is by far the most time consuming aspect of this project. . Currently, this process is performed manually, and is therefore extremely tedious, and hinders the progress of science in this field. The next generation "EIT" called MAGRITE, scheduled for launch in a few years on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, should be able to take 300,000 images in about four days and will need state of the art techniques to sift through the massive data to support scientific discoveries.The contribution to solar image mining has the potential to accelerate scientific discovery in solar physics, and other applications that rely on massive image databases. Research that advances state of the art in solar physics will have a significant impact because of the following reasons: (i) the climate connection: the sun is a source of light and heat for life on Earth. Scientists strive to understand how it works, why it changes, and how these changes influence the Earth, (ii) space weather: The sun is the source of the solar wind. Disturbances in the solar wind shake the Earth's magnetic field and pump energy into the radiation belts, and can change the orbits of satellites, shorten mission lifetimes, cause power surges and outages on Earth, and hence need to be predicted. (iii) The sun as a physical laboratory: the sun produces its energy by nuclear fusion, a process that scientists have strived for decades to reproduce by involving hot plasmas in strong magnetic fields. Much of solar astronomy involves observing and understanding plasmas under similar conditions. Students are actively engaged in the research program.