Mason scientist studying the influence of structure and turbulence on coronal and heliospheric dynamics

Raphael Attie, Research Assistant Professor, Physics and Astronomy,is studying the influence of structure and turbulence on coronal and heliospheric dynamics.  

For this project, Attie will provide his expertise in processing photospheric data for the coronal modeling effort of Rohit Chhiber, Research Associate III, University of Delaware.  

In particular, Attie will provide and process line-of-sight and vector magnetograms from the HMI instrument onboard NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).   

Attie will collaborate with Chhiber to incorporate the HMI data into synoptic magnetograms for connecting the photospheric magnetic field with the magnetic field in the heliosphere. 

In addition, Attie will help with the error analysis of the magnetograms for quantifying the uncertainties of the extrapolated magnetic field.  

Finally, Attie will contribute to the peer-reviewed publications that will describe the processing pipeline that will be developed for the assimilation of the magnetic data. 

As for the importance of the research, Attie said, "Our study is a synergistic combination of novel analyses of photospheric magnetic field observations to global modeling of the corona and inner heliosphere that couples large-scale flow to turbulence dynamics. This focused set of related problems will improve our understanding of Sun-Heliosphere connections and the magnetic origins of the heliosphere."  

Attie received $28,926 from NASA for this research. Funding began in June 2022 and will end in late May 2023.