In February, 2018, a specialized engineering team, led by principal investigator Dr. Qian Wu, traveled from Boulder, Colorado to a NASA facility in Palestine, Texas. The team spent two weeks working with NASA colleagues performing compatibility testing between the HiWIND electrical systems and the NASA balloon command and control communications systems.
During his thesis work at HAO, Newkirk Fellow Ricky Egeland developed a solar-stellar database called sunstardb. The "solar-stellar connection" began as a relatively small field of research focused on understanding the processes that generate magnetic field in stars and sometimes lead to a cyclic pattern of long-term variability in activity, similar to the one demonstrated by our Sun.
The lower atmospheric forcing effects on the ionosphere are particularly evident during extreme meteorological events known as sudden stratospheric warmings (SSWs).
Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) simulations are used to investigate the short-term (30-day) temporal variability in the mid- and high-latitude Southern Hemisphere mesosphere.
Solomon & Qian show that solar minima are not all the same, and may have implications for understanding the Sun during the extended periods of very low activity known as “grand minima” that have sometimes occurred in the past, the best known of which was the Maunder Minimum during 1650–1700.
View videos of past colloquia