Scientists from the US, Japan and Europe meet to discuss the results of the CLASP-2 experiment

Solar physicists in front of IAC
Participants of the CLASP-2 meeting held at the IAC headquarters in La Laguna. Credit: Iván Jiménez (IAC)
Advertised on
Authors
INSTITUTO DE ASTROFÍSICA DE CANARIAS

CLASP and CLASP2 are opening a new window for the investigation of magnetism in solar and stellar physics.

In 2008 an international team of solar physicists started a novel project of space experiments. By means of telescopes and instruments launched on board of NASA suborbital rockets, unprecedented measurements of the polarization of the ultraviolet light emitted by the Sun in several atomic lines were performed. Such spectro-polarimetric observations are needed for obtaining information on the magnetic field in the enigmatic chromosphere-corona transition region of the solar atmosphere, where in less than 100 km the plasma temperature jumps from ten thousands degrees in the chromosphere to more than one million degrees in the corona. The corona is that extremely rarified and extended region of the outer solar atmosphere visible with the naked eye only during a total solar eclipse.

In September 2015, the Chromospheric Lyman-Alpha Spectro-Polarimeter (CLASP) experiment achieved the first measurement of the linear polarization produced in the hydrogen Lyman-α line of the solar ultraviolet radiation, opening a path for probing the magnetic field and the three-dimensional structure of the plasma at the base of the solar corona. After this success, the Chromospheric LAyer Spectro-Polarimeter 2 (CLASP-2) was proposed and developed to measure the linear and circular polarization of the most intense radiation produced by the ionized magnesium atoms of the solar chromosphere.

Recently, in April 2019, CLASP-2 was successfully launched from the station that NASA has in White Sands Missile Range (New Mexico; USA), measuring for the first time the detailed wavelength-dependent variation of the light polarization in the important region of the solar ultraviolet spectrum located around 2800 Angstroms. “The polarization signals measured by CLASP and CLASP-2 in several spectral lines of the solar ultraviolet spectrum are providing unprecedented information on the magnetic field in active and quiet regions of the solar chromosphere”, says Javier Trujillo Bueno,  Research Professor of the CSIC at the IAC and one of the four Principal Investigators of CLASP and CLASP-2.

Both space experiments were motivated by theoretical investigations carried out by physicists of the POLMAG group of the IAC (see http://research.iac.es/proyecto/polmag/ ).

This group has organized the present meeting of the international CLASP-2 team, formed by about 25 researchers from USA, Japan and Europe. The CLASP-2 Science Meeting is taking place this week at the IAC headquarters in La Laguna. On Thursday November 14, the team will visit the Teide Astrophysical Observatory after two days of scientific talks and discussions about the results obtained thanks to such novel space experiments, which are opening up a new diagnostic window in solar and stellar magnetism.

Checking the results

CLASP-2 is an international collaboration led by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (USA), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (Tokyo, Japan), the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC, Tenerife, Spain) and the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale (IAS, France). Additional members are the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, the Istituto Ricerche Solari Locarno (Switzerland), Lockheed Martin Solar & Astrophysics Laboratory (USA), Stockholm Universiy (Sweden) and the Rosseland Center for Solar Physics (Norway).

Contact:
Javier Trujillo, Researcher at IAC and PI of CLASP and CLASP-2: jtb [at] iac.es (jtb[at]iac[dot]es)

News type
Press release

It may interest you

  • Magnetar surrounded by the nebula responsible for the radio emission associated with some FRBs
    Press release
    Grantecan helps solve the mystery behind some of the Universe's most powerful radio bursts
    A new international study, using observations from the Gran Telescopio Canarias at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, has identified a plasma bubble as the source of the persistent emission observed in some of the so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs), one of the most powerful and unknown cosmic events in the Universe. The data also allow researchers to constrain the nature of the “engine” powering these mysterious sources. The results are published today in Nature. Discovered just over a decade ago, fast radio bursts (FRBs) emit millisecond-long pulses that release an immense
    Advertised on
  • Simulation illustrating the distribution of dark matter particles expected in a low-mass galaxy if the dark matter did not collide (in orange, concentrated towards the center) versus the observed dark matter (in blue, far more dispersed) / Gabriel Pérez (IAC)
    Press release
    Researchers from the IAC have discovered that dark matter experiences forces beyond gravity
    The existence of dark matter is likely one of the most perplexing problems facing the scientific community, and unraveling its nature has become one of the primary goals of modern physics. In simple terms, we do not know what dark matter is made of, despite accounting for 85% of all the matter in the Universe. A study led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias concludes that dark matter does not behave as described by the dominant paradigm, which states that dark matter particles only interact with each other and with ordinary matter through gravity. The IAC study reveals that dark
    Advertised on
  • Recreation of the landscape of the exoplanet Barnard b orbiting its star / Gabriel Pérez (IAC)
    Press release
    IAC scientists detect a ‘sub-Earth’ orbiting Barnard’s star, the nearest isolated star to the Sun
    The single star nearest to the Sun is called Barnard’s star. A team of researchers led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has recently detected a ‘sub-Earth’ orbiting it. This exoplanet, called Barnard b has at least half the mass of Venus and orbits rapidly around its star, so that its year lasts only a little over three Earth days. This new exoplanet is sixteen times nearer to Barnard’d star than Mercury is to the Sun, and has a surface temperature close to 125oC, so it does not have liquid water on its surface. This discovery, led by the IAC in collaboration with a number
    Advertised on