SHINE: Differential Emission Measure Determination in Three-Dimension (3D) Using Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) Data

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The principal investigator (PI) and his team will assess and characterize a number of key performance metrics of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument on the newly launched Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. Addressing these technical issues is crucial for the effective interpretation and analysis of AIA data by the broader scientific community. These issues include the deconvolution of the instrument's point spread function, the identification of optically thick lines-of-sight to be excluded from future analysis, and the refinement of the relevant spectroscopic physics to allow the interpretation of AIA narrow-band images. The PI's team will then apply this new knowledge of AIA performance to the use of a technique known as differential emission measure tomography (DEMT), in order to determine the three-dimensional structure and thermal properties of the global solar corona. Comparisons between DEMT reconstructions and state-of-the-art solar wind models can improve the realism of these models and, ultimately, shed light on longstanding problems of how the Sun's corona is heated and how the solar wind is energized and accelerated.This project will benefit the solar research community and serve important educational functions. AIA data has the possibility to dramatically extend and improve the research community's ability to reconstruct the thermodynamic configuration of global solar corona from spectroscopic measurements in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. Also, this work will be performed at the University of Michigan, where it will support direct participation of undergraduate and graduate students in the research effort. The results of this work will be presented at scientific meetings and widely disseminated to the community through scientific publications.