The AstroStat Slog » Solar http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog Weaving together Astronomy+Statistics+Computer Science+Engineering+Intrumentation, far beyond the growing borders Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:05:33 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4 SDO launched http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2010/sdo-launched/ http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2010/sdo-launched/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:04:00 +0000 vlk http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/?p=4202 The Solar Dynamics Observatory, which promises a flood of data on the Sun, was launched today from Cape Kennedy.

]]> http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2010/sdo-launched/feed/ 0 The Big Picture http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2008/the-big-picture/ http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2008/the-big-picture/#comments Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:07:03 +0000 vlk http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/?p=1044 Our hometown rag (the Boston Globe) runs an occasional series of photo collections that highlight news stories called The Big Picture. This week, they take a look at the Sun: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/10/the_sun.html

The pictures come from space and ground observatories, from SoHO, TRACE, Hinode, STEREO, etc. Goes without saying, the images are stunning, and some are even animated. The real kicker is that images such as these are being acquired by the hundreds, every hour upon the hour, 24/7/365.25 . It is like sipping from a firehose. Nobody can sit there and look at them all, so who knows what we are missing out on. Can statistics help? Can we automate a statistically robust “interestingness” criterion to filter the data stream that humans can then follow up on?

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