May 20, 2010

These notes detail the status of our prediction of the structure of the corona for the total solar eclipse of July 11, 2010. We will use our three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic model to predict the structure of the magnetic field and plasma in the solar corona. We will generate images of the predicted magnetic field lines, the predicted polarization brightness (that is typically measured during eclipses), and predictions for the emission of EUV and X-rays in the corona.

May 27, 2010

We plan to post a preliminary prediction on this web site on or about July 1, 2010 (10 days before the eclipse), and a final prediction on or about July 6, 2010 (5 days before the eclipse).

May 28, 2010

We started a calculation on the NASA supercomputer Pleiades with a mesh of 151x101x182 points with magnetic field data for Carrington rotation 2095 (March 26 - April 22, 2010). This will start things off to get our heating model ready for the preliminary prediction. We are doing two runs with different heating to test some ideas out.

June 5, 2010

The two runs for for Carrington rotation 2095 completed. We are analyzing these runs to assess the effectiveness of our heating model. The emission from the model compares reasonably well with EUV and X-ray emission, so this is promising.

June 15, 2010

We are testing out some new coronal heating ideas by repeating runs from the July 2009 time period, since we have done extensive exploration of the heating during this time period.

June 20, 2010

We got interesting results from the coronal heating tests. These may improve our parameterization of the coronal heating source for the eclipse prediction. We found that heating with a heat flux that is proportional to the photospheric magnetic field strength improves the match of estimated emission with observations.

June 23, 2010

We are preparing a new magnetic field map for the next simulation. The data from MDI for Carrington rotation 2097 (data from May 15 - June 16, 2010) is almost ready. We'll probably use that data for the preliminary prediction.

July 2, 2010

Due to other ongoing time-critical activities, our preliminary prediction has been delayed. We are currently experimenting with some cases that are based on MDI data from Carrington rotation 2097. We will update this web site soon with an estimate of when we expect to post the preliminary prediction.

July 4, 2010

We have several runs going with different coronal heating specifications. The results look encouraging. We are planning to use one of these for the preliminary prediction. We plan to post the prediction at the end of the day on July 5th.

July 5, 2010

The preliminary prediction has been posted on our web site! Enjoy!

July 6, 2010

We have started a calculation for the final eclipse prediction with updated magnetic field data from MDI. We have incorporated magnetic field observations up to July 3rd, the latest data available on July 5th. We are running a high-resolution calculation on 181 x 221 x 501 mesh points. We expect to post the final prediction on or around July 8th.

July 8, 2010 (am)

Our target date to post the final eclipse prediction is late in the evening of July 8th.

July 8, 2010 (pm)

The final prediction has been posted on our web site! This updates the preliminary prediction that was posted on July 5, 2010. The final prediction uses updated MDI magnetic field data measured up to July 3, 2010.