Coronal loops on the sun are captured in ultraviolet light using the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument on NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory
JILA Fellow and University of Colorado physics professor Heather Lewandowski helped lead a group of more than 1,000 undergraduate students in a study looking at the temperatures of the Sun's corona. The corona, the outer layer, gets incredibly hot, and the study hoped to figure out why. Their research was featured in Popular Science Magazine, revealing the creativity and ingenuity of undergraduate students in scientific research.
“The question of why the sun’s corona is so much hotter than the ‘surface’ of the sun is one of the main outstanding questions in solar physics,” says Lewandowski in the article.
With their results published in the Astrophysical Journal, the study allowed undergraduates to participate in scientific research, gaining skills and experience that would help their future careers.
The Physics Frontiers Centers (PFC) program supports university-based centers and institutes where the collective efforts of a larger group of individuals can enable transformational advances in the most promising research areas. The program is designed to foster major breakthroughs at the intellectual frontiers of physics by providing needed resources such as combinations of talents, skills, disciplines, and/or specialized infrastructure, not usually available to individual investigators or small groups, in an environment in which the collective efforts of the larger group can be shown to be seminal to promoting significant progress in the science and the education of students. PFCs also include creative, substantive activities aimed at enhancing education, broadening participation of traditionally underrepresented groups, and outreach to the scientific community and general public.