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Catherine Phillips - First Week



My first week at the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research at NJIT went (luckily) almost exactly according to plan. After moving in to my room less than a block away from my lab, I had a weekend to contemplate my new home. I would say explore, except, being in Newark, there hasn’t really been that much wandering around. Newark is honestly a rather boring city. Nobody wants to visit, all the stores are closed on weekends and after 6 pm, and pretty much everyone flees to New York City on the weekends. Luckily, a light rail station a block away from my dorm makes that very convenient.

I had already gotten an overview of my research over email, and that was confirmed by my PI, Dr. Wang, upon my arrival to the lab. I would be working under Dr. Jing, a research professor, for the first part of my research, when I looked at H-alpha images. These are the emissions from a specific spectral line created by hydrogen. By comparing red- and blue-shifted images, I created a dopplergram. This is an image that shows the relative velocities of whatever it’s focused on. In this case, it let us compare the velocities at different points on the post-flare loops. If anyone reading this hasn’t seen my poster, post-flare loops are arcs of plasma that form after the explosive part of a solar flare and that follow the sun’s magnetic field, and they’re what I’m studying this summer. Comparing the velocities is important because it shows us how the flare is moving and evolving.

After learning how to load the necessary files into IDL, the software we use to process it, I had a steep learning curve where I (of course) attempted to optimize the data entry process. In doing so I not only learned a lot about the syntax of the language, but also made my job in the next part much easier. I still ended up having to spend two days on the data entry, after spending only one on creating a program to help. However, I managed to collect over 1000 data points (despite the mind-numbing task) so I count it as a success. After collecting the data I made it into a pretty histogram:



My lab is relatively laid-back with hours. Most people don’t come in daily, and absolutely nobody shows up before 10 (I tried once, it was very lonely). The only time everyone is at the lab is on Thursdays, when there’s a presentation on either someone’s research or a paper they studied. Going to the first one was very… interesting. It was about modelling the atmosphere of the sun based on a limited set of data to validate it, and I didn’t understand most of it. Of course, as one does when there’s something you don’t understand, I made myself ask a question. Apparently it was a good one, too, because the guy presenting didn’t actually have an answer. Hopefully by the end of this internship I’ll have absorbed enough related knowledge to actually understand these talks in their entirety.
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  1. TECJune 29, 2018 at 5:39 PM

    Yes - I can certainly imagine you trying to write code to avoid drudgery! Other EXPers have used IDL in the past - seems like a pretty useful program. Sounds like you are off to a great start!

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