This page provides news items following the most recent edition of the department newsletter (Fall 2012)

 

General News and Travel

Awards, Honors and New Positions

We welcome Phil Judge as Visiting Professor for AY2012-13. Phil has served as a Senior Scientist at the High Altitude Observatory, NCAR, in Boulder CO since 2004. Phil will collaborate with Charles Kankelborg and other members of the solar physics group. While at MSU Phil has kindly offered to teach two special topics courses:

Fall 2012: PHSX515 Advanced Topics in Physics: "Transport Processes in Plasmas" - The purpose of this course is to study how mass, momentum and energy are transported through plasmas, using the solar atmosphere as the main object of study. 

Spring 2013: PHSX515 "Advanced Topics in Physics: Spectroscopy of Plasmas" - The vast bulk of the observable universe is in the plasma state.  The purpose of this course is to show how we learn about plasmas (fully or partly ionized) from the radiation emitted by them.

Manuscripts Submitted

"Turbulent Dynamics in Solar Flare Sheet Structures Measured with Local Correlation Tracking", by D.E. McKenzie, submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.

"Development of the Newtonian Gravity Concept Inventory", K. Williamson, S. Willoughby and E. Prather, submitted to the Astronomy Education Review, Dec. 2012.

Proposals Submitted:

Awarded Grants and Contracts:

"MSU Contribution to Hinode/XRT Phase E: Mission Operations & Data Analysis--Extended Mission", awarded by SAO to PI David McKenzie, $375k, 11/1/2012 - 10/31/2014

 

Invited Presentations:

Invited Keynote talk given by Dick Canfield: "Magnetic Point-Charge Modeling of the Transfer of Energy to, and Storage of Energy in, the Corona", at Tracing the Connections in Solar Eruptive Events, 27th Nov - 2nd Dec 2012, Petaluma, CA