SOCIS 2017 Organization Application

SOCIS 2017 Application

SOCIS website Application deadline: ?

Project Name

SunPy

How is your project related to the Space sector?

The study of solar physics, space weather and other related sciences often involves the use of multiple instruments. Many of those instruments are in space, for example the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SoHO), Solar-Terrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO), Cluster, the Project for On Board Autonomy (PROBA-2), and the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft. Some are ground-based, for example, the LOw Frequency ARray radio telescope, which can be used for nowcasting and forecasting space weather. The study of space weather has been identified as being of critical importance as much modern infrastructure is dependent on space-based assets.

Much solar, heliospheric and space weather data are available to everyone in near real-time. Large and important archives of these data going back many decades also exist. However, the tools to reduce and analyse them are often based on privately held analysis packages that require restrictive, and often expensive licenses. This often puts a barrier between those wishing to analyse the data and the science goals of ESA, and space science in general.

SunPy is removing that barrier by developing open source, freely available, packages that enable ''anyone'' to analyse solar, heliospheric, and space weather data. As an alternate to the Solarsoft/IDL environment, SunPy ''deals directly with solar, heliospheric and space weather data, and so is directly relevant to activities in our local space environment''. We choose Python as our development language as it allows us to use many open source and free packages already developed for other astronomical disciplines. SunPy allows anyone to take data from ESA's solar and heliospheric space missions and perform their own analyses, free from any restriction, thus increasing awareness of ESA's mission in the scientific community. Free and open source technology for analysing solar and heliospheric data will make it easy for students to begin their scientific careers in space science, and will make the existing open-source science community aware of solar, heliospheric and space weather data.

Is your project free and open-source?

Yes

What is the web-page where a detailed description of your project can be found?

http://sunpy.org/about

Please describe the work you want to be performed by a SOCIS student on your project ? (short summary)

We propose two projects for this summer, both involve the creation of new tools to ease the analysis of solar physics data through python.

• The first project is about X-ray synthesis imaging techniques to apply it in the STIX instrument for the future ESA's mission Solar Orbiter.
• The second project has a wider scope, it is the development of a image processing module for SunPy. This will be of great use for any solar imager in any wavelength and it will start by translating into python some of the more important algorithms described in the literature.

Give a link to a web-page describing the suject of this work with more details

https://github.com/sunpy/sunpy/wiki/SOCIS-2017

Name and role in the project of the person who will mentor the SOCIS student

• Shane Maloney, PostDoc at Trinity College Dublin. Member of the Data reduction & Archiving for SOLO/STIX.
• Jack Ireland, Lead Support Scientist at GSFC. Core developer of SunPy.
• David Perez-Suarez, Research Software Developer at UCL. Core developer of SunPy.

Please list the skills required by the student

• Programming in a high-level general-purpose language (Java, C#, Python...)
• Maths, Physics, Space
• Other: Understanding of image processing will help

Have you read all the SOCIS general conditions and do you agree with them?

yes

Have you already identified a suitable student to perform the work?

maybe