RUI: Optical and Radio Studies of Coronal Plasma at the 2017 Eclipse

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The main goal of this 3-year project is to enable a unique observational campaign during the 21 August 2017 total solar eclipse across the North America. The eclipse observations are unique because they provide a rare opportunity to discover new types of solar phenomena that may be linked to the solar cycle and space weather. The project's high-resolution studies of flaring and active regions at long radio wavelengths should provide information that is potentially useful for space weather predictions. Studies of the solar corona at eclipses have been a major part of the success of the Williams College department in attracting and training students. Undergraduate students, increasingly including members of underrepresented groups through Williams' need-blind admissions policy, have been intimately connected with the eclipse expeditions in the past and the associated data reduction and analysis. This project would enable the active involvement and training of students at the Williams College to continue. Furthermore, since total solar eclipses are of widespread public interest in the countries from which they are visible, they provide an excellent opportunity for public education in the United States about astronomy in general. Therefore, this project directly supports the Strategic Goals of the AGS Division in discovery, learning, diversity, and interdisciplinary research. This 3-year project is to take advantage of the 21 August 2017 total solar eclipse, especially to observe the white-light corona and work with highly processed images that bring out detail and extreme contrast, allowing improved measurements of dynamics of coronal plumes and other coronal features, especially coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and to observe the green-line (Fe XIV), and red-line (Fe X) coronas to contrast regions of different temperatures. The solar observations include exquisitely high resolution observations with a Fabry-Perot. Also, high-frequency (1 Hz) power spectra of coronal loops will be used to compare mechanisms of coronal heating. Spectrographic observations will allow the project team to investigate changes of the spectral-line ratios over the solar-activity cycle as the cycle, now past a low maximum, declines toward. Radio telescopes, including the Jansky Very Large Array, will provide the best-ever mapping of active regions to pinpoint the different locations of radio and EUV eruption origins.