Engineering topics

Bachmann, Kurt T.

Publications and source records attributed to Bachmann, Kurt T..

5 records

NASA NTRS2000

The Solar Convection Spectrum

I helped to complete a research project with NASA scientists Dr. David Hathaway (my mentor), Rick Bogart, and John Beck from the SOHO/SOI collaboration. Our published paper in 'Solar Physics' was titled 'The Solar Convection Spectrum' (April 2000). Two of my undergraduate students were named on the paper--Gavrav Khutri and Josh Petitto. Gavrav also wrote a short paper for the National Conference of Undergraduate Research Proceedings in 1998 using a preliminary result. Our main result was that we show no evidence of a scale of convection named 'mesogranulation'. Instead, we see only direct evidence for the well-known scales of convection known as graduation and supergranulation. We are also completing work on vertical versus horizontal flow fluxes at the solar surface. I continue to work on phase relationships of solar activity indicators, but I have not yet written a paper with my students on this topic. Along with my research results, I have developed and augmented undergraduate courses at Birmingham-Southern College by myself and with other faculty. We have included new labs and observations, speakers from NASA and elsewhere, new subject material related to NASA and space science. I have done a great deal of work in outreach, mostly as President and other offices in the Birmingham Astronomical Society. My work includes speaking, attracting speakers, giving workshops, and governing.

Bachmann, Kurt T.↗

NASA NTRS1998

Mesogranulation as A Distinct Scale of Convection in the Sun

We present evidence for the existence of mesogranulation as a scale of convection distinct from granulation and supergranulation through analysis of full-disk Doppler velocity images of the Sun collected by the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) aboard the NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Our analysis procedures isolate nearly steady flows in the solar photosphere and yield power spectra of convection for spherical harmonic degrees up to I = 1000. Each spectrum exhibits an obvious supergranulation peak at I approximately 130 and a broad secondary peak at I approximately 600 with a distinct break in the spectrum between these peaks at I approximately 300. We believe that this secondary peak is a signature of mesogranulation with typical cell diameters of about 7 Mm. Our standard analysis procedure is to first remove the p-mode oscillation signal by averaging individual Dopplergrams over 17-minute intervals. Next, by fitting to standard functional forms we remove Doppler signals due to the motion of the spacecraft, the convective blueshift, solar rotation including differential rotation, and the meridional circulation in order to produce Dopplergrams dominated by convective motions. By mapping these processed images onto heliographic coordinates and projecting onto spherical harmonics, we produce a power spectrum of solar convection for each 17-minute period. We construct synthetic images and pass them through the same analysis procedure in order to determine the actual solar convection spectrum that reproduces the analyzed results. We find that a small but increasing percentage of high-degree convective power is lost in the analysis as we approach the limit of resolution of the detector but'that the broad, mesogranulation peak at I approximately 600 must be included in the convection spectrum of the synthetic images.

Bachmann, Kurt T.↗

NASA NTRS1994

Observations of hysteresis in solar cycle variations among seven solar activity indicators

We show that smoothed time series of 7 indices of solar activity exhibit significant solar cycle dependent differences in their relative variations during the past 20 years. In some cases these observed hysteresis patterns start to repeat over more than one solar cycle, giving evidence that this is a normal feature of solar variability. Among the indices we study, we find that the hysteresis effects are approximately simple phase shifts, and we quantify these phase shifts in terms of lag times behind the leading index, the International Sunspot Number. Our measured lag times range from less than one month to greater than four months and can be much larger than lag times estimated from short-term variations of these same activity indices during the emergence and decay of major active regions. We argue that hysteresis represents a real delay in the onset and decline of solar activity and is an important clue in the search for physical processes responsible for changing solar emission at various wavelengths.

Bachmann, Kurt T.↗

NASA NTRS1993

Observations of intermediate degree solar oscillations - 1989 April-June

Frequencies, splittings, and line widths from 85 d of full disk Doppler observations of solar p-modes taken between April 4 and June 30, 1989 are presented. Comparison of the present mode parameters with published Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) results yields good agreement in general and is thus a confirmation of their work using an independent instrument and set of analysis routines. Average differences in p-mode frequencies measured by the two experiments in spring-summer 1989 are explained as a result of differences in the exact periods of data collection during a time of rapidly changing solar activity. It is shown that the present a(1) splitting coefficients for p-modes with nu/L less than 45 micro-Hz suffer from a significant systematic error. Evidence is presented to the effect that a detector distortion or alignment problem, not a problem with the power spectra analysis, is the most likely explanation of this a(1) anomaly.

Bachmann, Kurt T.↗

NASA NTRS1993

p-mode frequency variation in relation to global solar activity

We show that p-mode frequency variations correlate remarkably well with the variations of six solar activity indices over a 6 yr period from 1984 October to 1990 November, including both the large variation from solar minimum to solar maximum and smaller variations observed over approximately 1 month intervals during solar maximum. The quality of correlation as seen visually and as measured by two statistical tests differs significantly among the six activity indices, and we briefly speculate on possible reasons for this. Observations used in this study come from the HAO/NSO Fourier tachometer (FTACH) and include the spherical harmonic degree range l greater than 20 and equal to 60 or less and frequency range between 2600 and 3200 micro-Hz. The data are divided into 18 separate epochs with time string duration ranging from a minimum of 18 days to a maximum of 45 days. We have particularly good coverage during the early part of solar maximum of cycle 22.

Bachmann, Kurt T.↗