Characterising the heating and cooling imprints of the solar corona

我们生活在太阳的大气层-日冕-一个充满能量和数百万度的环境，被太阳磁场所渗透。日冕的高能量背后的机制是天体物理学中的一个主要的开放性问题。神秘的加热机制的潜在关键最近已经通过高分辨率观测直接观察到，成为全球主要的头条新闻（Antolin等人，2021，Nature Astronomy）。加热的印记被发现是一种“纳米喷射”：具有特定形态和动力学的无处不在的微小喷射状结构。解决日冕加热难题的下一个问题是太阳上的纳米喷射有多普遍？日冕也隐藏着一个冷却问题。就像烤箱里的雪花一样，一百倍更冷、更密集的气体团神秘地形成在日冕中，并以一种壮观的现象落下，称为日冕雨。这种冷却现象与日冕加热机制有关，一个中心的问题是有多少日冕雨渗透到日冕中？我们现在可以通过开发神经网络，用机器学习方法来解决太阳日冕的这两个基本问题。您将学习如何使用Python编程，并开发尖端的深度学习软件，以自动检测NASA/ESA卫星观察到的纳米喷射流和日冕雨。反过来，您将有机会通过与我们的合作伙伴进行实习，将开发的方法应用于实际问题。

We live within the Sun's atmosphere - the solar corona - a highly energetic and multi-million-degree environment permeated by solar magnetic fields. The mechanisms behind the high energy of the corona constitute one of the major open questions in astrophysics. The potential key to the mysterious heating mechanism has been recently directly observed by high-resolution observations, making major worldwide headlines (Antolin et al., 2021, Nature Astronomy). The imprint of the heating was found to be a "nanojet": ubiquitous tiny jet-like structures with specific morphology and dynamics. The next question in the path to solving the coronal heating puzzle is how prevalent nanojets are on the Sun?The solar corona also conceals a cooling problem. Like snowflakes in the oven, a hundred times colder and denser clumps of gas mysteriously form in the solar corona and fall in a spectacular phenomenon termed coronal rain. This cooling phenomenon is linked to the coronal heating mechanism, and a central open question is how much coronal rain permeates the corona?We can now tackle these two essential questions of our Sun's corona with a machine learning approach through the development of neural networks. You will learn how to programme in Python and develop cutting-edge deep learning software to automatically detect nanojets and coronal rain observed with NASA/ESA satellites. In turn, you will have the opportunity to apply the methods developed to real-life problems by undertaking a placement with our partners.