SUMI experiment – to study constantly changing magnetic fields on the Sun

sumi-experiment-to-study-constantly-changing-mangetic-fields-on-the-sun

On July 5, 2012 NASA successfully launched a mission called the Solar Ultraviolet Magnetograph Investigation or SUMI, to study the intricate, constantly changing magnetic fields on the sun in a hard-to-observe area of the sun’s low atmosphere called the chromosphere.

The primary objective of the SUMI experiment is to test the technologies that have been developed for making magnetic field measurements in the upper chromosphere/ lower transition region. Transition region magnetic field measurements are very important, but the most important Zeeman sensitive lines are in the ultraviolet which are impossible to observe from the Earth. SUMI plans to make exploratory polarization measurements in this region to develop the scientific tools to analyze and convert our polarization data into vector magnetic field measurements and to use this data in determining the sensitivity requirements for space-based missions.

Magnetic fields, and the intense magnetic energy they help marshal, lie at the heart of how the sun can create huge explosions of light such as solar flares and eruptions of particles such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). While there are already instruments – both on the ground and flying in space – that can measure these fields, each is constrained to observe the fields on a particular layer of the sun’s surface or atmosphere. Moreover, none of them can see the layer SUMI will observe.

“What’s novel with this instrument is that it observes ultraviolet light, when all the others look at infrared or visible light,” says Jonathan Cirtain, a solar scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. and the principal investigator for SUMI. “Those wavelengths of light correspond to the lowest levels in the sun’s atmosphere, but SUMI will look at locations higher in the chromosphere.”

This higher layer of the chromosphere is known as the transition region – because the chromosphere transitions here into the part of the sun’s atmosphere called the corona — and it is a region that is dominated by the magnetic fields and in which solar material heats up dramatically forming the corona and the base of the solar wind. Understanding the structure of the magnetic fields in this region will then allow us to understand how the corona is heated and how the solar wind is formed. It is also an area believed to be where flare accelerated particles originate, so understanding the processes at play in the transition region can help with models to predict such eruptions on the sun.

To measure magnetic fields in the chromosphere, SUMI will observe the ultraviolet (UV) light emitted from two types of atoms on the sun, Magnesium 2 and Carbon 4. Through established methods of measuring how the light is affected as it travels through the magnetic environment of the solar atmosphere towards Earth, scientists can measure the original strength and direction of the magnetic fields, thus creating a three-dimensional magnetic map of the region.

This trip for SUMI is largely a test flight to make sure the instrument works and to assess possible improvements. The instrument flew once before in July 2010 but experienced a much higher G-force than expected, which broke screws holding the main mirror in place so it could not gather accurate data. The team has now reinforced the mirror.

“With the knowledge we get from a successful SUMI mission, we can go on to build space-based instrumentation that will help us understand the processes that form flares and CME’s and help us predict space weather,” says Cirtain.

SUMI was launched from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on a Black Brant IX sounding rocket on July 5, 2012. Preliminary results showed that good data was received.

Source: NASA

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One Comment

  1. To all of this is written clearly and resolved, it is necessary to find the real causes that cause these changes. Scientists believe more instruments, which are sent to the Sun, but your intuition and natural laws.
    To all this can be deciphered, it should be understood that the only cause of these phenomena, the forces within the solar system.
    There is a chain of phenomena and the challenger, which is quite natural and understandable.
    I do not know who reads these comments, it seems that they do not read those engaged in solving these problems.
    If anyone would have interest to resolve these phenomena, should contact me to make a deal to do with contractual obligations.
    I know for sure what causes the 11-year sunspot cycle phenomenon. AND MANY OTHER.
    I will not be surprised, as before, if no one responds to this. This will be proof that today’s scientists are afraid of new evidence, because many of their past mistakes and will not be revealed to be the profits from the ignorant people, which are all offered as a high knowledg

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