AST

3018 Project
Investigating the Sun


In this project you will investigate some physical properties of the Sun by making
your own observations of the Sun and also using data available on the web, obtained
from solar observatories.

REMEMBER: NEVER LOOK AT THE SUN DIRECTLY with your eyes or through an
unfiltered device such as a telescope or binoculars. Practice eye safety. Serious
eye injury, including blindness can occur from even a looking at the Sun. This is
more than advice. Why? As a kid, did you ever take a magnifying glass out into the sun
and burn leaves? If so, you probably remember that when the focused sunlight coming
through the lens was refracted and concentrated to a small spot, the energy available
there was truly remarkable. Guess what? You have a lens just like that in your eye. If
you look at the sun, your eye-lens will concentrate the sun's light and focus it to a very
small spot on the back of your retina. This can cause permanent eye damage or
blindness. Additionally, there are no pain sensors back there so you won't even know
it's happening! from How to Observe a Solar Eclipse by Ron Hipschaman

Outline of Contents and Due Dates:

I. Observe the Sun with Your Own Pinhole Observatory 2
A. What to do 2
B. Report Guidelines 2
II. Determining the Size and Luminosity of the Sun 3
A. What to do 3
B. Report Guidelines 3
III. Determining the Rotation Period of Sun 3
A. What you need 4
B. Analysis 4
C. Report Guidelines 4
D. Extra Credit 5

IV. Due Dates

September 7
a) Optional Groups formed
b) Background research completed (see section IA1)
c) Initial design completed (section IB2)
d) Hand in:
Initial Write up of sections IB1 & IB2, names of group members

October 5
Final, Complete Project Report DUE Typed & with all graphs and figures
I. Observe the Sun with Your Own Pinhole Observatory

In this part of your project you will work in groups of 3 to 4 to design and construct
your own pinhole observatory. You will use your observatory to project and record
an image of the Sun.

A. What to do
1. Research how pinhole projection/cameras work and how they are used to
safely observe the Sun. Some useful websites are listed, but there are many
others that you can explore.
http://users.erols.com/njastro/barry/pages/pinhole.htm
http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hemh/transit.htm
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUAnKsW93xU

2. Design your own pinhole projection or reflected pinhole projection
observatory. The goal is to get a large and good enough projected image of
the sun and observe and record some sunspots. You have complete freedom
in your design, it can be as simple or as sophisticated, as you like, the only
requirement is that it is works! Be creative and have fun!

3. Construct, test out and perfect your pinhole observatory. You may need to
change your initial design and experiment to improve your image of the Sun.
Once you are satisfied with your observatory set-up, take pictures of the set
up to put in your report.


4. Make and record your own observations of the Sun. Each student on the team
should trace their own projected image of the Sun onto a white piece of
paper (you will need this for Part II of the project) and mark any features you
see such as Sunspots. Each member of the group should have their own
tracing to work with and turn in. In addition, you can also take pictures of
your image with a digital camera or record your projectioln directly on film.

B. Report:
Each student should write an individual report of your work. Your report should
include

1. A brief description of how pinhole projection works and produces an
image
2. Diagrams of your initial design
3. A description of what you did
4. A discussion of any changes you made to your initial design and the
outcome of these changes
5. Pictures of your final observatory set up
6. Presentation and description of your resulting observations of the
Sun.
 7. Finally, you should list the members of your group and what
everyones contributions to this part of the project were.


II. Determining the Size and Luminosity of the Sun
Now that you can image the Sun with your pinhole observatory, lets investigate
some solar properties. For this part of the project, you can take data in your group
but as in # 5, write up your results and analysis individually.
The physical size of the Sun is a fundamental property and is related to the
temperature and luminosity (energy output) of the star. If we assume the distance
to the Sun to be 1 A.U. (1.5 x 108 km) then we can use a measurement of the angular
diameter of the Sun to determine its physical diameter by simple geometry.

A. What to do:
1. Use your pinhole observatory to observe a projected image of the Sun. Tape a
white sheet of paper to your projection screen and trace the bright image of
the sun (you can use the images you made earlier - see #4 in Section I ).
2. Take at least 3 measurements of the diameter of these solar images in the
direction (a) going up & down and then(b) going left to right.
3. Take at least 3 measurements of the distance from the pinhole to the sheet of
paper.
4. Calculate the average diameter and distance and corresponding errors.
5. Determine the Solar diameter. The ratio of the angular diameter to the
distance from the image to the pinhole is equal to the ratio of the true
physical diameter of the sun to the distance from the Sun to the pinhole (~1
AU). Be careful of you units. Be sure to include errors on your estimate
6. Determine the Luminosity of the Sun using the Stefan-Boltzman Law and
assuming an effective temperature for the Sun of 5780 K. Include errors on
your estimate.

B. Report:
Present your results. Include
1. A table of your individual measurements and resulting averages.
2. Your calculations of the solar diameter and luminosity.
3. A comparison of your values of the diameter and luminosity to published
values in your textbook
4. A discussion of the errors and uncertainties in your determinations.


III Determining the Rotation Period of Sun

The Sun rotates about its own axis as does the Earth and most astronomical objects.
Unlike the Earth, the Sun is not a solid object. Therefore the Sun exhibits differential
rotation different parts of the Sun rotate at different rates. This differential
rotation plays an important role in the generation of magnetic fields and sunspots.
We can trace the differential rotation by observing the motion of sunspots located at
different latitudes.

For this part of the project, you estimate the rotation rate of the Sun for at least 2
different latitudes and compare them. You can obtain your own observations from
your pinhole observatory (for extra credit) or you can obtain current images of the
Sun and its sunspots from either the Soho or Solar Dynamic Observatory. You
should work individually. If you choose to take your own observations, you may
collaborate on the data taking.

A. What you need:
1. Observations of the sun and sunspots, over a 10 to 20 day period, either taken by
you (for extra credit) or obtained from one of the following websites:

Solar Dynamic Observatory:
sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data - use one of the HMI Intensitygram images (browse
data)
SOHO:
sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/ - current images
sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/data/synoptic/ - archive

The SOHO sites above are nice since they label the sunspots. The times the observations
were taken are not listed however. You can assume that they were taken at the same time
each day. However you should double check this by going to
sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/data_query and searching for your dates and finding
which time matches your images.


2. appropriate Solar, Stonyhurst grid
found at: http://solar-center.stanford.edu/solar-images/latlong.html

B. Analysis
1. Find at least two (if possible) prominent sunspots, preferably at differing
latitudes. You should follow these spots over a 10 to 20 day period, getting
observations at least every other day.
2. For each spot, measure the location (longitude and latitude) of the spots on
the sun by using the solar grid, scaled to match the size of the sun on your
image. Dont forget to also record the date and time of each solar observation.
3. For each individual sunspot, construct a plot of longitude (y-axis from -90 to
90) versus increasing time (in units of days i.e. first observation at 11:30
would be 11.5/24 or .48 days and the next days observation at 12 would be
1.5 days). Note if measurements are good, the data points should trace a
straight line.
4. Measure the slope of the line for each spot.
5. Estimate the rotation period from the slopes.
6. Compare rotation periods for the individual spots.
 7. Compare what you found to what is known in the literature about the
rotation of the Sun.

C. Report
For this part of the report please include
1. A figure of the images or observations used. Make sure you identify the sunspots
you used for your measurements.
2. A table of your measurements.
3. Graphs of longitude versus time for each spot used.
4. Example of your calculations.
5. A Results table with slopes and resulting rotation period for each latitude.
6. A discussion of your uncertainties and errors.
7. Comparison of your results for the different latitudes and brief discussion of
what this means. Is this what you expected?
8. Discuss how your results compare to what is known about the Sun and if your
results are different from what was expected, discuss why that may be.

D. Extra Credit
If you observed the sun and sunspots with your pinhole observatory, please include
in your report a description of your set-up and observing procedure.