{"id":206880,"date":"2024-11-25T11:16:16","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T21:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=206880"},"modified":"2024-11-26T12:41:50","modified_gmt":"2024-11-26T22:41:50","slug":"researchers-decode-suns-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2024\/11\/25\/researchers-decode-suns-secrets\/","title":{"rendered":"<abbr>AI<\/abbr> and Astronomy: <abbr>UH<\/abbr> researchers to help decode Sun\u2019s secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span><figure id=\"attachment_206885\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-206885\" style=\"width: 676px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/manoa-ifa-ai-astronomy-1.jpg\" alt=\"Plasma loops above sunspots\" width=\"676\" height=\"381\" class=\"size-full wp-image-206885\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/manoa-ifa-ai-astronomy-1.jpg 676w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/manoa-ifa-ai-astronomy-1-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/manoa-ifa-ai-astronomy-1-130x73.jpg 130w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 676px) 100vw, 676px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-206885\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Large coronal loops sitting above the solar surface, all imaged in extreme ultraviolet emission (Image credit: NASA\/TRACE)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Research by astronomers and computer scientists at the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ifa.hawaii.edu\/\">Institute for Astronomy<\/a> (<abbr>IfA<\/abbr>) could revolutionize our understanding of the Sun.<\/p>\n<p>The study, part of the &ldquo;SPIn4D&rdquo; project, combines cutting-edge solar astronomy with advanced computer science to analyze data from the world&#8217;s largest ground-based solar telescope atop Haleakal\u0101, Maui.<\/p>\n<p>The team\u2019s research recently published in <a href=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.3847\/1538-4357\/ad865b\"><em>Astrophysical Journal<\/em><\/a> focuses on their development of deep learning models that rapidly analyze vast amounts of data from the U.S. National Science Foundation (<abbr>NSF<\/abbr>) <a href=\"https:\/\/nso.edu\/telescopes\/inouye-solar-telescope\/\">Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope<\/a>. The goal is to unlock the full potential of the telescope\u2019s observations that could potentially lead to breakthroughs in speed, accuracy and scope of solar data analysis.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Related <em><abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> News<\/em> story: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2020\/01\/29\/first-light-inouye-solar-telescope\/\">Never-before-seen images of Sun released from world\u2019s largest solar telescope<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure id=\"attachment_206887\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-206887\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/manoa-ifa-ai-astronomy-dki-telescope-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"telescope building\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-206887\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/manoa-ifa-ai-astronomy-dki-telescope-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/manoa-ifa-ai-astronomy-dki-telescope-130x73.jpg 130w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/manoa-ifa-ai-astronomy-dki-telescope.jpg 676w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-206887\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope atop Haleakal\u0101. (Photo credit: <abbr>NSF\/NSO\/AURA<\/abbr>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&ldquo;Large solar storms are responsible for stunning auroras, but can also pose risks to satellites, radio communications and power grids. A better understanding of their birth place, the solar atmosphere, is extremely important,&rdquo; said Kai Yang, an <abbr>IfA<\/abbr> postdoctoral researcher who led the work. &ldquo;We used state-of-the-art simulations to mimic what the Inouye will see. Combining these data with machine learning offers an invaluable opportunity to explore the three-dimensional solar atmosphere in near real-time.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The Inouye Solar Telescope, operated by the <abbr>NSF<\/abbr> National Solar Observatory (NSO), is by far the world\u2019s most powerful solar telescope, and stands on the 10,000-foot summit of Maui\u2019s Haleakal\u0101, which translates to &ldquo;the house of the Sun.&rdquo; The telescope\u2019s instruments are designed to measure the Sun&#8217;s magnetic field using polarized light, and the SPIn4D project was designed specifically to use this data, which is only available from the solar telescope\u2019s instrumentation suite.<\/p>\n<h2>Innovative solar research<\/h2>\n<figure id=\"attachment_206886\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-206886\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/manoa-ifa-ai-astronomy-2.jpg\" alt=\"bright red\/orange swirl coming off planet surface\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-full wp-image-206886\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/manoa-ifa-ai-astronomy-2.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/manoa-ifa-ai-astronomy-2-130x130.jpg 130w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-206886\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hybrid image of a coronal mass ejection and the solar chromosphere from NASA satellite images (Image credit: SOHO&#8212;<abbr>ESA<\/abbr> &#38; NASA))<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The team of scientists from NSO and High Altitude Observatory (<abbr>HAO<\/abbr>) utilize deep neural networks to estimate physical properties of the solar photosphere from the Inouye Solar Telescope\u2019s high-resolution observations. This method promises to significantly speed up the analysis of the massive data volumes produced by the solar telescope, which can reach tens of terabytes per day.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Machine learning is very good at providing fast approximations to expensive computations. In this case, the model will enable astronomers to visualize the Sun\u2019s atmosphere in real time, rather than waiting hours to achieve the same accuracy,&rdquo; said co-author Peter Sadowski, an associate professor at the <abbr>UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ics.hawaii.edu\/\">information and computer sciences department<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Simulating the Sun<\/h2>\n<p>To train their <abbr>AI<\/abbr> models, the team has produced an extensive dataset of simulated solar observations. Using more than 10 million <abbr>CPU<\/abbr> hours on the <abbr>NSF<\/abbr>\u2019s Cheyenne supercomputer, they\u2019ve created 120 terabytes of data mimicking Inouye Solar Telescope observations at extremely high resolution.<\/p>\n<p>The team has already made a 13-terabyte subset of their data publicly available, along with a detailed tutorial. They plan to release their fully trained deep learning models as a community tool for analyzing Inouye Solar Telescope observations.<\/p>\n<p>This research is supported by a $669,000 grant from <abbr>NSF<\/abbr>\u2019s Astronomy and Astrophysics Grants program. The team of scientists is composed of Yang, Xudong Sun, Ian Cunnyngham, Jiayi Liu, Curt Dodds (<abbr>UH<\/abbr> <abbr>IfA<\/abbr>), Sadowski, Yannik Glaser (<abbr>UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa ICS), and Sarah Jaeggli, Tom Schad, Lucas Tarr (NSO) and Matthias Rempel (<abbr>HAO<\/abbr>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><abbr>UH<\/abbr> astronomers and computer scientists have developed models  to significantly speed up the analysis of massive data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[34,35,1467,1363,158,1164,9],"class_list":["post-206880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-astronomy","tag-institute-for-astronomy","tag-manoa-excellence-in-research","tag-manoa-research","tag-publication","tag-telescope","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206880"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206935,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206880\/revisions\/206935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}