SMCAS

Feb 6th 2009

Dr. Thomas Berger

 

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Thomas Berger is a solar physicist at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab (LMSAL) at the company's Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif.

Presentation Abstract:

Dr. Berger will present results and video from the latest solar space missions, primarily the Japanese Hinode mission on which he is a Co-Investigator for the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) instrument. The SOT is a 50-cm Gregorian telescope with both filter and spectrographic imaging instruments in the Focal Plane Package (FPP). The FPP was designed and built at LMSAL in Palo Alto. Hinode was launched in September 2006 into a sun-synchronous orbit that provides 24-hour continuous observation of the Sun for 9 months of the year. Hinode has made several break-through discoveries in its young two-year lifetime including many new findings in Dr. Berger's field of solar prominence research. Prominences are large formations of relatively cool 10,000 K gas lofted high into the million-degree solar corona. They are often associated with large "coronal cavities" that are thought be magnetic flux ropes in the solar corona. These flux ropes form the cores of "coronal mass ejections" (CMEs) that can impact the Earth's magnetosphere to cause magnetic substorms, auroral displays, and particle events that can damage or destroy orbiting satellites. Prior to the new SOT results, prominences were thought be relatively static "suspensions" of gas. The SOT results show that prominences are far more dynamic than previously thought, exhibiting strange new "bubble formations" as well as buoyant turbulent upflows. Dr. Berger will discuss these new findings and their implications for understanding the larger coronal cavity and CME systems.