Browsing by Author "Winebarger, Amy R."
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Item The First Flight of the Marshall Grazing Incidence X-Ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS)(IOP Publishing, 2023) Savage, Sabrina L.; Winebarger, Amy R.; Kobayashi, Ken; Athiray, P. S.; Beabout, Dyana; Golub, Leon; Walsh, Robert W.; Beabout, Brent; Bradshaw, Stephen; Bruccoleri, Alexander R.; Champey, Patrick R.; Cheimets, Peter; Cirtain, Jonathan; DeLuca, Edward E.; Zanna, Giulio Del; Dudík, Jaroslav; Guillory, Anthony; Haight, Harlan; Heilmann, Ralf K.; Hertz, Edward; Hogue, William; Kegley, Jeffery; Kolodziejczak, Jeffery; Madsen, Chad; Mason, Helen; McKenzie, David E.; Ranganathan, Jagan; Reeves, Katharine K.; Robertson, Bryan; Schattenburg, Mark L.; Scholvin, Jorg; Siler, Richard; Testa, Paola; Vigil, Genevieve D.; Warren, Harry P.; Watkinson, Benjamin; Weddendorf, Bruce; Wright, ErnestThe Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS) sounding rocket experiment launched on 2021 July 30 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. MaGIXS is a unique solar observing telescope developed to capture X-ray spectral images of coronal active regions in the 6–24 Å wavelength range. Its novel design takes advantage of recent technological advances related to fabricating and optimizing X-ray optical systems, as well as breakthroughs in inversion methodologies necessary to create spectrally pure maps from overlapping spectral images. MaGIXS is the first instrument of its kind to provide spatially resolved soft X-ray spectra across a wide field of view. The plasma diagnostics available in this spectral regime make this instrument a powerful tool for probing solar coronal heating. This paper presents details from the first MaGIXS flight, the captured observations, the data processing and inversion techniques, and the first science results.Item The origin of reconnection-mediated transient brightenings in the solar transition region(Springer Nature, 2021) Bahauddin, Shah Mohammad; Bradshaw, Stephen J.; Winebarger, Amy R.The ultraviolet emission from the solar transition region is dominated by dynamic, low-lying magnetic loops. The enhanced spatial and temporal resolution of the solar observation satellite Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) has made it possible to study these structures in fine detail. IRIS has observed ‘transient brightenings’ in these loops, associated with strong excess line broadenings1,2 providing important clues to the mechanisms that heat the solar atmosphere. However, the physical origin of the brightenings is debated. The line broadenings have been variously interpreted as signatures of nanoflares3, magneto-hydrodynamic turbulence4, plasmoid instabilities5 and magneto-acoustic shocks6. Here we use IRIS slit-jaw images and spectral data, and the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly of the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft, to show that the brightenings are consistent with magnetic-reconnection-mediated impulsive heating at field-line braiding sites in multi-stranded transition-region loops. The spectroscopic observations present evidence for preferential heating of heavy ions from the transition region and we show that this is consistent with ion cyclotron turbulence caused by strong currents at the reconnection sites. Time-dependent differential emission measure distributions are used to determine the heating frequency7,8,9 and to identify pockets of faintly emitting ‘super-hot’ plasma. The observations we present and the techniques we demonstrate open up a new avenue of diagnostics for reconnection-mediated energy release in solar plasma.