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Note: there are links to presentations (PDFs and YouTube videos) in the schedules below.
“Explosive Space Weather Events and their Impacts"
The 2020 Summer School will focused on the foundations of Heliophysics with particular focus on transient energetic events such as solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and geomagnetic storms. The lecture series will include a core set of lectures covering the fundamentals of Heliophysics and lectures devoted to the phyiscs underlying explosive events. Additional lectures will cover the impacts these events have on life and technology, how these effects might be mitigated, and how the events might be forecast. The lectures will be supplements with hands-on laboratory exercises that explore the fundamental Sun-Earth system.
“Heliophyiscs Exploration"
The 2019 Heliophysics Summer School focused on the Heliophyiscs System Observatory (HSO) which is comprised of numerous spacecraft studying each element of the heliophysics system separately, as well as their interaction. Several exciting new spacecraft have been added to the HSO over the past several years, including Magnetospheric Multi-scale (MMS) and Parker Solar Probe (PSP). Measurements and discoveries from these latest additions will fuel and focus our the coming years. The 2019 Heliophyiscs Summer School focused on the fundamental scientific principals underlying the areas these new measurements will probe.
“Comparative Heliophysics"
The 2018 Heliophysics Summer School focused on the foundations of heliophysics while exploring connections to adjacent disciplines from the perspective of our local cosmos; stars like the Sun, planets like those in the solar system (including exoplanets), and formation histories not too dissimilar from those that are relevant to understanding the formation, evolution, and present state of our immediate space environment.
“Long-term solar activity and the climates of space and Earth”
The 2017 Heliophysics Summer School focused on the physics of the connections between the Sun, the heliosphere, the magnetospheres and the upper atmospheres of the planets. The solar system offers a wide variety of conditions under which the interaction of bodies with a plasma environment can be studied, while exoplanets and Sun-like stars offer an even wider range of perspectives with lessons about our local cosmos from distant past to distant future.
The Heliophysics Summer School: 10 Years and Counting
By Dr. Tony Phillips
Demographics of the LWS Heliophysics Summer School
by Andres Munoz-Jaramillo
“Explosive Energy Conversions and Particle Acceleration”
The 2016 Summer School began with an overview of the various components composing the Heliophysical system, and reviewed some of the universal physical processes at work throughout the system. It then focused on several kinds of explosive events which serve to illustrate these universal processes that occur through the coupled Heliophysical system. The explosive events include solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and, geomagnetic storms and substorms. The school also covered the impacts these and other explosive events might have on infrastructure and people on Earth.
Seasons In Space: Cycles of variability of Sun-Planet systems
The 2015 Summer School started with the foundations of heliophysics and proceeded with a focus on the cycles of variability throughout the planetary system: the origins of the sunspot cycle, the consequences for the solar wind and the galactic cosmic rays, and the variety of impacts of these processes on planetary environments and upper atmospheres, particularly Earth's. The School addressed the space-weather consequences of solar wind patterns associated with the Sun's rotation, and looked into the consequences of planetary orbital motions that cause the seasonal changes in geospace from ionosphere to magnetotail that are associated with the tilt of planetary spin and magnetic axes relative to the orbital planes.
Comparative Heliophysics
The 2014 Summer School focused on the foundations of heliophysics while exploring connections to adjacent disciplines from the perspective of our local cosmos: stars like the Sun, planets like those in the solar system, and formation histories not too dissimilar from those that are relevant to understanding the formation, evolution, and present state of our immediate space environment.
Heliophysics of the Solar Systems
Encompassed under a general title of comparative magnetospheres are processes occurring on a range of scales from the solar wind interacting with comets to the interstellar medium interacting with the heliosphere. The 2013 Heliophysics Summer School addressed not only the physics of all these various environments but also the technologies by which these various environments are observed. The program was complemented with considerations of the societal impacts of space weather that affects satellites near Earth and elsewhere in the solar system.
Heliophysical Exploration
The 2012 Heliophysics Summer School focused on the science underlying current and future heliophysical missions. After providing students with broad overviews of the solar atmosphere, the course covered the basic concepts and unanswered questions pertaining to magnetic reconnection, shocks, plasma instabilities, turbulence, and heating, and the manner in which these concepts and questions affect our understanding of phenomena such as substorms, radiation belt and chromospheric dynamics, solar wind turbulence and particle heating, and heliospheric shocks.
The emphasis of the course was on the quest for understanding and advancing heliophysical science that has inspired and motivated the missions mentioned above. The course was based on lectures, laboratories, and recitations from world experts, and drew material from all three textbooks Heliophysics I-III.
Long-term solar activity and the climates of space and Earth
The 2011 school focused on long-term processes, from the Sun's modulated activity to its influences on the climate systems of the heliosphere, Earth's atmosphere and planetary environments. This class drew material from the third volume of the textbook series, Heliophysics III: "Evolving solar activity and the climates of space and Earth" as well as basic material from the first volume: Heliophysics I: "Plasma physics of the local cosmos".
The continuation of the school program each summer will teach new generations of students and develop the complementary materials that support teaching of heliophysics at both graduate and undergraduate levels.
Prof. Amitava Bhattacharjee (University of New Hampshire), Prof. Dana Longcope (University of Montana-Bozeman), and Prof. Jan Sojka (Utah State University) were the Deans of the fifth summer school.
Space Storms
Using Textbooks I & II, the 2010 school developed problem sets and labs in conjunction with individual lectures. The problem sets and labs were developed as auxiliary material for the textbooks.
The first three programs of the summer school encompassed the entire scientific discipline that is now called heliophysics, which was borne out of the need for interdisciplinary research in the context of NASA's Living with a Star (LWS) Program. The result was the production of three textbooks for use at universities worldwide.
Drs. Karel Schrijver (Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center) and George Siscoe (Boston University) were the Deans of the first three summer schools.
Evolving solar activity and the climates of space and earth
The third year of the program focused on long-term processes, from the Sun's modulated activity to its influences on the climate systems of the heliosphere, Earth's atmosphere, and planetary environments.
Space storms and radiation: causes and effects
The second year covered explosive energy conversion and energetic particles.
Plasma Physics of the Local Cosmos
The first year covered the plasma physics of the local cosmos, i.e., the science that is uniquely enabled by our existence within an environment of ionized gases.
Private 2022 Schedule
(PW required)
Resources - Presentations from past Summer Schools
General Information for Travelers
John A. (Jack) Eddy
This gentle overview of the processes connecting the Sun to Earth is now available as a COMET MetEd training module (login required).
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Heliophysics Science
Find Heliophysics Summer School Presentation Playlists on the CPAESS YouTube channel