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Overview

Heliophysics Summer School
12-19 July 2013 - Boulder, CO

Heliophysics of the Solar Systems

Special Opportunity for Physics Students & Physics Teachers

Deadline is 1 March

Applications are invited for the 2013 Heliophysics Summer School, which will be held in beautiful Boulder, Colorado. We are seeking students and undergraduate level teachers and instructors to join us this coming summer for a unique professional experience.  Students and teachers will learn about the exciting science of heliophysics as a broad, coherent discipline that reaches in space from the Earth's troposphere to the depths of the Sun, and in time from the formation of the solar system to the distant future.  At the same time, a goal of the Summer School is for the group of instructors to develop materials from Heliophysics that can be applied in their classes.

The Heliophysics Summer School focuses on the physics of space weather events that start at the Sun and influence atmospheres, ionospheres and magnetospheres throughout the solar system. The solar system offers a wide variety of conditions under which the interaction of bodies with a plasma environment can be studied: there are planets with and without large-scale magnetic fields and associated magnetospheres; planetary atmospheres display a variety of thicknesses and compositions; satellites of the giant planets reveal how interactions occur with subsonic and sub-Alfvenic flows whereas the solar wind interacts with supersonic and super-Alfvenic impacts.

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 school will address not only the physics of all these various environments but will also go into the technologies by which these various environments are being observed. The program is complemented with considerations of the societal impacts of space weather that affects satellites near Earth and elsewhere in the solar system.

The school will be based on lectures, laboratories, and recitations from world experts, and will draw material from the three textbooks Heliophysics I-III, published by Cambridge University Press.

Several teachers along with about 35 students will be selected through a competitive process organized by the UCAR Visiting Scientist Programs. The school lasts for eight days, and each participant will receive the full set of three textbooks and full travel support for airline tickets, lodging and per diem costs.

Student Application Requirements

• Currently enrolled as a graduate student in any phase of training, or first or second year postdoctoral fellow.
• Major in physics with an emphasis on astrophysics, geophysics, plasma physics, and space physics, or experienced in at least one of these areas.
• Pursuing a career in heliophysics or astrophysics.
• Apply here

Teacher Application Requirements

• At least three years of teaching experience.  (Already having a connection with heliophysics is not a requirement.)
• Currently teaching physics (preferably electricity & magnetism), astronomy/planetary science, or Earth sciences at the upper division undergraduate level, at a U.S. university or college.
• Willingness to provide feedback to the Summer School faculty and organizers on the comprehensibility and comprehensiveness of the overall set of lectures and supporting materials.

• Apply here

The first three schools produced textbooks for use at universities worldwide.

• 2007: Plasma Physics of the Local Cosmos

• 2008: Space storms and radiation: causes and effects

• 2009: Evolving solar activity and the climates of space and earth

The continuation of the school program each summer teaches new generations of students and develops the complementary materials that support teaching of heliophysics at both graduate and undergraduate levels.

• 2010: Space Storms

• 2011: Long-term solar activity and the climates of space and Earth

• 2012: Heliophysical Exploration

The Summer School has two principal aims:

1. Deepen the appreciation of the basic science of heliophysics for a select group of students, as faculty take them through highly interactive seminars and hands-on working groups, and
2. Expand the textbook series to include labs, problem sets and background material, from which heliophysics may be taught at universities worldwide.

For further information, call (303) 497-8649 or e-mail vspapply@ucar.edu

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