Characterising the heating and cooling imprints of the solar corona

我们生活在太阳的大气层——太阳日冕——一个被太阳磁场渗透的高能量和数百万度的环境中。日冕高能量背后的机制构成了天体物理学中主要的未决问题之一。最近，通过高分辨率观测直接观测到神秘加热机制的潜在关键，成为全球主要的头条新闻（Antolin et al., 2021, Nature Astronomy）。加热的印记被发现是一种“纳米射流”：具有特定形态和动力学的无处不在的微小射流状结构。解决日冕加热之谜的下一个问题是，太阳上的纳米喷流有多普遍？日冕还隐藏着一个冷却问题。就像烤箱里的雪花一样，比太阳温度低100倍、密度高100倍的气体团神秘地在日冕中形成，并以一种壮观的现象落下，这种现象被称为日冕雨。这种冷却现象与日冕加热机制有关，一个悬而未决的核心问题是，有多少日冕雨渗透到日冕中？我们现在可以通过神经网络的发展，用机器学习的方法来解决这两个关于太阳日冕的基本问题。您将学习如何用Python编程，并开发尖端的深度学习软件，以自动检测纳米射流和日冕雨与NASA/ESA卫星观测。反过来，您将有机会通过与我们的合作伙伴进行安置，将开发的方法应用于现实生活中的问题。

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.