Colloq Abstract - White
November 30, 2018
11:00am Mountain
Stephen White (USAF)
Observing the Sun with ALMA
Abstract
After an introduction that will look at some of the current activity in solar radio astronomy, this talk will focus on the recent commissioning work carried out to enable ALMA to observe the Sun, and early results from the first science observations. Solar observing is carried out with the receivers in a detuned state that avoids nonlinearity, but complicates calibration in other ways. Observations of the Sun at millimeter wavelengths are typically sensitive to the chromosphere, a dynamic layer filled with low-contrast structure on all spatial scales that represents one of the most challenging imaging problems in radio astronomy. Examples of the resulting data and the science that it can address will be presented.
