The McIntosh Archive of synoptic maps is complete!

In 1964, Patrick McIntosh, a scientist at NOAA’s Space Environment Center in Boulder, CO, began creating hand-drawn synoptic maps of solar magnetic features.

Partnership Continues with NASA's PSP and MLSO–WHPI

Beginning in January 2021, there are new plans underway for continued coordinated efforts between NASA's PSP seventh perihelion and the WHPI campaign.

Space Weather Challenge & Forecasting Implications Of Rossby Waves

Rossby waves arise in thin layers within fluid regions of stars and planets. These global wave-like patterns occur due to the variation in Coriolis forces with latitude.

Boulder scientists’ work lead to astonishing images of sun’s surface

The highest resolution images of the solar surface ever seen were made possible to no small degree by the work of Boulder based scientists.

Global-scale observations and modeling of far-ultraviolet airglow

The NASA Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) instrument is an ultraviolet imager and spectrograph that observes light from the upper-atmosphere of the Earth, in order to infer qua

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Recent News

Photographic image of Mausumi Dikpati, senior scientist at HAO

Mausumi Dikpati Publication is Featured by AAS Nova

December 15, 2020

A recent publication by Mausumi Dikpati was featured by AAS Nova in November 2020.

Congratulations to Peter Gilman, elected AAS Legacy fellow!

December 9, 2020

Senior Scientist Emeritus Peter Gilman has received the newly established Fellow of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) award.

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Publication Highlights

Graphic image showing scattering geometry

On single-point inversions of magnetic dipole lines in the corona

March 3, 2021

Prompted by a recent paper by Dima and Schad, we re-consider the problem of inferring magnetic properties of the corona using polarimetric observations of magnetic dipole (M1) lines.

Graphic image of active-regions' toroid patterns

Deciphering Deep-Origin of Active Regions From Analysis Of Magnetograms

February 23, 2021

Dikpati, et. al., derive magnetic toroids from surface magnetograms by employing a novel optimization method based on Trust Region Reflective algorithm. Toroids obtained are combinations of Fourier modes (amplitudes and phases) with low longitudinal wavenumbers.

Graphic depicting root-mean-square difference of the plasma drift

Data-Driven Ensemble Modeling of Equatorial Ionospheric Electrodynamics

February 4, 2021

A Case Study During a Minor Storm Period Under Solar Minimum Conditions: The dayside equatorial ionospheric electrodynamics exhibits strong variability driven simultaneously by highly changeable external forcings that originate from the Sun, magnetosphere, and lower atmosphere.

More highlights in our archive >>

MLSO Latest Images

CoMP Coronal Intensity

The COronal Multi-channel Polarimeter (CoMP) observes the Fe-XIII emission line at 1074.7 nm to measure the coronal magnetic field and obtain plasma density and motion in the low corona from ~1.03 to 1.5 solar radii.

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K-Cor White Light Corona

Designed to study the formation and dynamics of coronal mass ejections and the evolution of the density structure of the low corona, K-Cor records the polarization brightness (pB).

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K-Cor (radially graded filter)