The workshop’s overarching goal is to expand our understanding of how the Sun drives the heliosphere. The origins lie in the inner solar corona—a region roughly between 1.5 and 5 Rs—where the solar wind and solar eruptions form and acquire their defining physical properties. A topic of much research and theoretical/modeling attention, the origin of solar activity remains obscure, primarily because of the difficulty in observing the inner corona. The region, accessible only via remote sensing instruments, is, at the same time, too wide for EUV imaging but too close to the limb for conventional visible light coronagraphy, resulting in inadequate spatial, temporal and spectral coverage.
Solar eclipses provide a unique opportunity to study the inner corona without these restrictions. Visible light imagers can observe the full region from the solar limb to beyond 5 Rs offering interrupted coverage, The upcoming total solar eclipse of April 8, 2024 offers an unprecedented opportunity to study this solar region. The eclipse is both relatively long at 4+ minutes and the target of multiple ground-based investigations under the Whole Heliosphere and Planetary Interactions (WHPI) umbrella, as it crosses the continental U.S.A. The ground-based observations will be complemented by an extensive constellation of orbiting observations, including the inner heliospheric probes of Parker Solar Probe (PSP) and Solar Orbiter (SolO) and new missions, such as Aditya-L1, and ASO-S.
The workshop will address its goal by leveraging the unprecedented amount of data with advances in modeling, simulations and computational algorithms (i,e, ML/AI) to answer three straightforward but long-standing science questions:
- What is the 3D morphology of the corona?
- What are the equations of state (density, temperature, speed, magnetic field) of the inner corona?
- How does the coronal structure evolve in short (seconds/arcseconds) to medium (hours-days/arcminutes) temporal/spatial scales?
To maintain focus, the workshop will concentrate on visible-light observations.
The programme will consist of a review talks, several short contributions, and moderator-led discussions. The workshop is by invitation only, with preferred in person participation. We expect to have approximately 40 participants.