Space research for society on every scale H-SPACE 2018 4th International Conference on Research, Technology and Education of Space February 15-16, 2018, Budapest, Hungary

Solar Physics in the high school

Study of the sunspots

Pető Mária Székely Mikó High School St. George, Romania

Observing the Sun

Pinhole camera

The overall goal of this workshop is to follow the evolution of sunspots and to determine the differential rotation of the Sun at different latitudes with two methods. The purpose of the classroom activity is • to familiarize students with the possibilities of sunspots

observing, • to calculate the differential rotation period of the Sun from

the movement of sunspots and • to search for connection between sunspot activities and

terrestrial processes, between terrestrial phenomena and space weather.

These activities correspond for lower and upper secondary school students (12-14 and 14-18 years old).

At its poles the Sun’s rotation period is 35 days while at the equator is 25 days. This is known as differential rotation.

The Sun behaves as a dynamo.

Workshop activity for 7-8th grade students or humanity classes.

• Every group get a paper with 12 or 16 images of the Sun, which was

taken on different days at the same time. We use: http://fenyi.solarobs.unideb.hu/ESA/HMIDD.html

• Collect and record sunspot data;

• The selected sunspots are followed from their appearance until

disappearance.

• Using the daily-obtained data, they calculate the movement of the sunspot in terms of distance, angle (α) and the time that has elapsed between the two observations (Δt).

• Based on this, they calculate the rotation period (TSun) and speed (vSun) of the Sun.

RSUN= 6,9598* 105km the radius of the Sun

𝜔 =∆𝛼

∆𝑡 angular speed; 𝑇 =

2𝜋

𝜔= 2𝜋

∆𝑡

∆𝛼 differential period of rotation;

𝑣 =2𝜋𝑅

𝑇 rotation speed

SDO/HMI 2014 05 02; 07:30:00

http://solar-center.stanford.edu

Upper secondary school students activity

y = 0,2348x - 1,5343

-2

-1,5

-1

-0,5

0

0,5

1

1,5

2

2 July 3 July 4 July 5 July 6 July 7 July 8 July 9 July 10 July 11 July 12 July 13 July 14 July

arcs

in (

x/A

)

Sunspot - 12109, latitude S8o arcsin(x/A)

Lineáris (arcsin(x/A))𝒙 = 𝑨𝒔𝒊𝒏 𝝎𝒕

𝒙

𝑨= 𝐬𝐢𝐧 𝝎𝒕

𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐬𝐢𝐧𝒙

𝑨= 𝝎𝒕

𝝎 =𝟎, 𝟐𝟑𝟒𝟖𝒓𝒂𝒅

𝒅𝒂𝒚

𝑻 =𝟐𝝅

𝝎= 𝟐𝟓, 𝟕𝟓𝟗𝟕𝒅𝒂𝒚

Workshop for upper secondary school students using SOHO Science Archive and Aladin sky atlas

a). SOHO Science Archive: http://ssa.esac.esa.int/ssa/ssa.jnlp b). Aladin (Virtual Observatory) interactive sky atlas: http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/java/nph-aladin.pl?frame=downloading

For example: selected period 14.12.2009. 23:59:o1-25. 12. 2009. 23:59:o1.

Send the selected imagines to Aladin software. Using this picture we determine the

coordinates of the sunspot (x and y) and the radius of the sun.

SUN

centre

R

YYLatitude arcsin

SUN

centre

R

XXLongitude arcsin

date time (t) x y R sinα=y/R α=arcsiny/R Δα=Δb =Δα/Δt T=2

2oo9.

dec.14. 23:59:01 -49,5 258 250,08 -0,1979367 -0,199252484 1,217260566 0,202876761 30,970453 day

2oo9.

dec.2o. 23:59:01 400 258 470 0,85106383 1,018008081

latitude:

38,327

Sunspots close the sun equator:

T=25,411176day differential rotation; 0,247255 rad/day

References:

ESA/GTTP Teacher Training Workshop 2010, Amsterdam. ESAC SOHO Science Archive tutorial, editors: L. Sanchez, D. Baines, P. Osasuna, ESAC Science Archives and Virtual Observatory Team, 2o14; EAAE-ESO Summer School Garching, Proceedings, 2007. Kálmán B. Mi a baj a napfoltokkal?, Fizikai Szemle 2013/11. 365.o. Eyes on the Skies- 400 years of Telescopic Discovery, Editors: G. Schilling, L. Lindberg Christensen; Wiley-VCH Verlag, Darmstadt. ISBN 978-3-527-40865-8. http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Solar_activity http://www.spaceref.com/ http://fizikaiszemle.hu/archivum/fsz1311/kalman1311.html http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/data_query https://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/realtime-update.html http://www.spaceweather.com/ http://spaceweather.com/glossary/sunspotnumber.html http://fenyi.solarobs.csfk.mta.hu/en/databases/SOHO/ https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/ https://solarmonitor.org/

Thank you for your attention.

Münzlinger Attila, 2o11.

I would like to acknowledge the support of the Content Pedagogy Research Program, MTA-ELTE Physics Education Research Group (Project number 471027) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Münzlinger Attila, 2o12. Münzlinger Attila, 2o11.