HAO News

Dr. Joe Huba is a Senior Research Scientist at Syntek Technologies in Virginia and a long-standing Affiliate Scientist at HAO. In a Scientia article, he explores the complex process of vast plasma bubbles forming in the upper atmosphere and quickly ascending into space.

The K-Cor coronagraph instrument at the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory on Hawai’i is used by a team of two scientists to record the rare transit of Venus across the Sun's corona. Sky & Telescope describes the movie captured by Alfred de Wijn (High Altitude Observatory, NCAR) and Gunther Können (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute). 

High Altitude Observatory (HAO) staff was invited by UCAR Science Education to present “Space Weather” to the public at the Little Shop of Physics 29th Annual Open House at the Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

Paul Bryans tells Sun Superheroes that a solar eclipse is an opportunity to understand and study the Sun's magnetism. 

On October 6th, the MLSO staff participated in AstroDay 2018, an educational outreach event coordinated by the Mauna Kea Observatories. 3,000 people attended. This was the second occurrence of this event, located in Kailua-Kona, on the west side of Hawaii Island. It featured booths and science displays from various local observatories, robotics clubs from numerous schools, and other tech-savvy groups.

Educational outreach is an important and rewarding part of an observer’s job at the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory (MLSO) site located on the flanks of Mauna Loa Mountain at an elevation of 3440 meters in the U.S. state of Hawai’i. MLSO is operated by the High Altitude Observatory (HAO), a division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which is located in Boulder, Colorado.

Physics World presents an article co-authored by HAO senior scientists, Philip Judge and Roberto Casini, on the challenges for the "budding research scientist" when selecting a meaningful research field and future career.

Jenna Samra had a very extraordinary scientific research experience while visiting Colorado this summer. The recent August 21 total solar eclipse provided Jenna a unique opportunity to test an instrument that she helped design and build, the airborne infrared spectrometer or AIR-Spec.

HAO scientists observed the August 21st total eclipse with a suite of three instruments with financial assistance provided by NASA. The experiments were intended to learn about the magnetic and thermal structure of the solar corona with the goal of understanding how the Sun generates weather in space.