[人工协作类] Solar Stormwatch（太阳风暴守望者）

BiscuiT

一个新的人工协作项目，是监测和观察太阳风暴从爆发到到达地球的过程的。

太阳风暴，指太阳突然向外喷发强大粒子流的活动。太阳风暴会对无线电有很大的影响，它也是低纬度极光的成因。

官方主页：http://solarstormwatch.com/

BiscuiT

2010 年 3 月 31 日



格林威治皇家天文台将于 4 月 17 日举办 Solar Season 活动：http://www.nmm.ac.uk/visit/events/solar-season/
适合年龄 11+ 的朋友，活动有天文馆表演，研讨会，讲座，还有互动画廊。

另外也可以看看他们的免费展览，太阳的故事：http://www.nmm.ac.uk/visit/exhibitions/on-display/solar-story/
了解太阳的秘密：http://www.nmm.ac.uk/visit/events/secrets-of-the-sun

5 月 9 日将有由 Becky Higgitt 演讲有关的太阳历史。这个是收费的，门票8英镑。。

BiscuiT

2010 年 5 月 18 日

WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE A SOLAR SCIENTIST

As one of the younger members of the UK’s STEREO team, I thought it would be nice to provide a few updates about what a scientist does day-to-day. I am currently coming to the end of my PhD, and am therefore busily writing up a thesis. But, of course, there are a few more interesting things to talk about apart from me sitting in front of a computer!

A lot of my work uses the Heliospheric Imagers on the STEREO spacecraft. In particular, I have been spending my time looking at solar storm case studies, and analysing the overall shape of them. The simplest approximation to the shape of a solar storm is a cylinder. If you observe one end on, you will see a circular shape. I found a perfect example of one that happened in February 2008, using the STEREO Ahead spacecraft (in the pictures below the front half of the circle fades away fast but, a semi circle of the rear edge of a circle can be seen further into space). I then spent some time analysing how this storm grew in size as it travelled away from the Sun.

Previously, scientists have looked at the size of solar storms at different locations in space and have predicted the growth rate. My work was the first time that we have been able to monitor a single solar storm this far away for the Sun.

One problem with my analysis is that solar storms, like hurricanes on Earth, are incredibly variable from one case to another. It would be fantastic if we could find more examples of near-perfect circular storms. We could then build up a better picture. So let me know if you spot anything interesting, and keep up with the great work.

Neel Savani

霊烏路空

2010 年 6 月 8 日

Stormwatch Science – what would you like to know?

Thanks to Neel for his ‘life as a scientist’ piece. While Neel is busy writing up his results, Stormwatch is gearing up for the next release of activities with which we hope to be analysing each storm in much greater detail. As we accumulate data from all your dedicated analysis, we are starting to get some preliminary science results that, at some point, when we are confident that we are interpreting them correctly, we will want to share with you so that you can see the outcome of your hard work. the question is, how would you like us to do this? Obviously there is the blog and the forum but are there any other ways you would like us to communicate the science with you?

Meanwhile, Stormwatch continues to attract media attention. This month’s (June) Sky at Night magazine contains an article summarising several astronomy projects that rely on the input from many members such as Galaxy Zoo, Moon Zoo and Solar Stormwatch (the cover disk also contains the April edition of the TV programme which is all about the Sun).

Those of you who have been looking at the real-time data will know that the Sun appears to be waking up (slowly mind you!) and this means that it is becoming increasingly likely that a CME will occur. Keep up the good work, and look out for new activities in Solar Stormwatch soon.

Chris.

姫海棠 果

2010-08-02

SDO sees a big storm

From our colleagues in the USA…

Space Weather News for August 1, 2010
http://spaceweather.com

GLOBAL ERUPTION:  During the early hours of August 1st, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a complex global disturbance on the Earth-facing side of the sun.  Most of the sun’s northern hemisphere was involved in the event, which included a long-duration C3-class solar flare, a “solar tsunami,” and a massive filament eruption.  As a result of these blasts, a coronal mass ejection (CME) is heading toward Earth. High-latitude geomagnetic storms and auroras are possible when the cloud arrives a few days hence.  Check http://spaceweather.com for movies and updates.

BiscuiT

2010-08-13

Zooniverse meetups, August-September 2010
作者：solarstormwatch

Solar Stormwatch is just one part of a ‘Zooniverse’ of citizen science projects, which began with Galaxy Zoo and recently grew to include Moon Zoo. If you’d like to meet the people behind the Zooniverse, there’s a meetup of the Oxford team on 20 August.
And, if you want to shape the future of citizen science, you can come along to the Citizen Cyberscience Summitat King’s College London on 2-3 September:

• Steven Bamford, astrophysicist and Zooniverse science director, will talk about the science that Galaxy Zoo is generating
• Solar Stormwatch’s volunteer forum moderator,Jules, will be on a panel discussing why people volunteer their time for science projects, what they learn from it, and how social networking helps science
• Philip Brohan from the UK Met Office will introduce a new Zooniverse project that opens up historical climate records

(There’s a registration fee of £10 for the summit, which includes refreshment breaks and lunch on both days.)
Fiona

BiscuiT

2010-08-15

Big questions answered
作者：solarstormwatch

The astronomers at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich produce a regular podcast where they answer the public’s questions about astronomy.

If you have a big question about the sun (or anything else astronomical), they’d love to answer it – just call 020 8123 9911 to record your question, then listen in to hear if it’s answered in the latest episode.
Fiona

BiscuiT

2010-08-18

New game ‘Trace It’ released along with more ‘Spot’ data
作者：solarstormwatch

The long-awaited new game ‘Trace it’ is released today and represents a rolling up of the metaphorical sleeves as we seriously get into analysing the data from the NASA STEREO mission. Thanks to all your efforts with the ‘Spot’ game we have now identified the solar storms in the STEREO HI data up to February 2010. In ‘Trace it’, we use the information you gave us about the start time of these storms and mark these times on a more abstract data product that solar scientists call j-maps (the reasons are somewhat convoluted but we like to think ours are named after Jackie who is the person responsible for creating them).

In these plots we have taken slices through a sequence of images and stacked them to produce a collage of distances versus time for each storm, which appears as gently curling lines on each j-map. We do this because the edges of storms are sometimes difficult to pick out in the images but the human brain is very good at picking out lines in an image. In ‘Trace it’ we ask you to mark points along each storm track. By running your points through our analysis programs here at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, we will be able to calculate a more precise speed and direction for each storm. Once you have become used to this new way of looking at the data, we want to move on to viewing the real-time data in the same way, and then the fun really begins
Don’t think we’ve finished with the ‘Spot’ game though, we have uploaded all the movies since February 2010 and, as you will have seen in the fuzzy real-time data, there have been quite a few new storms lately. You may have thought it was insanely active already but the Sun is only just beginning to wake up so hang on, it’s going to be an interesting ride and we need you more than ever if we are going to keep up!
Thanks again for your efforts so far,
Chris

BiscuiT

2010-08-19

‘Trace it’ – our plan for developing automated alerts
作者：solarstormwatch

Those of you who have been following recent solar activity in the ‘Incoming!’ game may be forgiven for thinking that solar storms are like buses. We wait around for ages with no sign of one and then we get several at once!
The great thing about having so many people scrutinising our data from all around the world is that someone, somewhere will be the first to see something and we in the UK do not have to sit up all night wondering if something new is happening. We have seen how solar storms can be identified in near real-time with the ‘Incoming!’ game and now that ‘Trace it’ is up and running, you can help us make a more precise assessment of the speed and direction of each storm.
We intend to analyse your data as you process it. If enough of you agree that a storm is Earth-directed, we will then issue an automated alert on Twitter to ensure that scientists, aurora-watchers, spacecraft operators and astronauts can all benefit from the advanced warning that such a space-weather forecast will provide.
Thanks again for all your time, effort and enthusiasm,
Chris

BiscuiT

2010-08-23

The First 6 Months: Happy Half-Birthday Solar Stormwatch!
作者：jules

Just 6 short months ago a new Zooniverse project was born. But this one was different. Not a galaxy or supernova in sight. Just one rather special star. Ours.
Solar Stormwatch was set up to track and monitor coronal mass ejections (CMEs) better known as solar storms. There’s a great deal we don’t know about solar storms. We know the Sun isn’t as quiet as it seems and that sometimes, huge solar explosions are hurled out across the solar system. As Chris Davis one of the Solar Stormwatch team says:

“Each one of these storms is a billion tons of material traveling at a million miles an hour, so they’re not inconsequential.”
One thing we do know is that they are spectacular to look at.
Solar Storm in Stereo Ahead

In fact they can be seriously spectacular.
Image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory

There is a downside, however as with each solar storm comes a deadly blast of radiation so astronauts on the ISS need to know if a storm is on its way and which direction it’s heading so they can time their space walks carefully. Solar storms also have the potential to knock out communication satellites, damage power lines and disrupt mobile phone networks as well as produce spectacular auroral displays.
But no-one really knows what triggers them, why they happen or why they are different each time. To find the answers requires analysing thousands of solar storms. Acquiring data isn’t a problem. Since their launch in October 2006 the twin Stereo spacecraft have provided 25 terabytes of data – over 100,000 images. But that’s a lot of data for a small team in deepest darkest Oxfordshire to analyse. Ideally they needed a few thousand research assistants who were happy to offer their time freely and who wouldn’t drink all the team’s coffee and eat all their biscuits so the team turned to the crowdsourcing benefits of Citizen Science and on 22 February 2010 Solar Stormwatch went live.
So what have we found in the first 6 months? The Science Team at Rutherford Appleton are busy collating and analysing the results but in the meantime, while we eagerly wait for them, here’s a summary from a user’s perspective.

1. We have confirmed 229 storms from Solar Stormwatch Spot videos. This will help the team’s research into the speed, direction and frequency of solar storms. Each solar storm must be validated by several stormwatchers to count. The more people who mark a solar storm, the more likely it is that it really is a storm. To trigger further investigation the team need at least 20 people to spot the same solar storm.
2. We have also checked current (”live”) storm data. Around 25 solar storms have been found this way. To do this we use Stereo’s “beacon mode” data. This is a low quality version of the latest pictures transmitted every hour, so we can keep watch on events as they happen. The pictures are black and white, grainy and slightly mysterious but as near to real time as we can get and to see a storm appearing at the end of a video is always exciting. Then there is the wait for an hour or so for the next frame to be added, and then the next….
3. We have learned about circular storms – the “Perfect Storm.” Solar storms come in different shapes and sizes and exactly what kind of storms we see being hurled out from the Sun depends partly on their magnetic fields. The Sun behaves like a liquid which complicates things somewhat and the magnetic field lines that go through the “surface” twist and loop as the conductive fluid moves around. Without any further complications storms tend to end up in a helix shape and appear like a cylinder. If you look at a cylinder end on (the view we get from Stereo) you see a circle, a circular storm – a relatively simple uncomplicated storm. The “perfect” kind of storm to study.
Over 90,000 people have visited the site from 174 countries or principalities. The top 5 countries (ranked in order of highest number of visits) are:

1. UK         (30%)
2. USA         (25%)
3. Canada        (5%)
4. Germany        (3%)
5. France         (3%)

We have just been set a new stormwatching challenge and now we can trace and record individual storms in more detail and later in the year we will learn how to track storms. But Solar Stormwatch is so much more than just watching and measuring storms. In the last 6 months we have found all kinds of weird stuff – caused by camera flares, optical effects, spacecraft rolling manoeuvres and dust. In fact an early Solar Stormwatch discovery was that the Stereo spacecraft are encountering much more dust out there than expected and this has produced some interesting results. Stereo’s eyes have also spotted comets and planets including the Earth and Moon. And we have a real community with competitions, meet-ups, an art gallery and a virtual café with an endless supply of cake. But that’s enough for now. More about those next time.
Meanwhile – if you are reading this and haven’t considered Solar Stormwatch, why not try something a little different? You can do as much or as little as you want. You can choose the task you like best and stick to it or dabble in all of them while you learn about the effect of our nearest star on its neighbourhood. And if you need help just pop into the forum where you’ll get a warm welcome.
Next time: The Particles Strike Back….and other strange happenings.

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Jules is a volunteer moderator for the Solar Stormwatch Forum.

qysnn

Solar Stormwatch项目已完成其第一阶段的任务，其成果被发表至7篇论文中，目前Solar Stormwatch第二阶段已经开始，项目网址被移至https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/shannon-/solar-stormwatch-ii