2nd Successful Spectropolarimetry School

The High Altitude Observatory and the National Solar Observatory organized their second successful Spectropolarimetry School in Boulder, Colorado. This two-week school held at the end of August presented an overview of the field of solar spectropolarimetry and the diagnostic techniques used to analyze and interpret spectropolarimetric observations of the Sun.

Solar magnetism is at the root of all solar activity and is the driving force of Space Weather. The characteristics of the magnetic field are encoded in the polarization of the light emitted by the Sun, and sensitive analysis techniques are necessary to reveal them. This school explored the observations, the theory and the tools that help us determine the state and evolution of the Sun's magnetic field through its polarized spectrum. The curriculum covered theoretical topics such as polarized radiative transfer, polarimetric instrumentation, scattering polarization and the Hanle effect, as well as dozens of hours of hands-on tutorials with different spectral line inversion codes. The school brought together 19 domestic and 7 international participants as well as multiple leading experts from around the world.