New Bulgarian-Austrian project 'Joint observations and investigations of solar chromospheric and coronal activity'

TL;DR

This paper introduces a collaborative Bulgarian-Austrian project focused on enhancing solar chromospheric and coronal activity observations through new instrumentation, data automation, and joint scientific analysis to advance solar physics research.

Contribution

It presents a novel international collaboration combining ground-based and spacecraft data, new telescope calibration, and machine learning applications for solar feature recognition.

Findings

Successful setup and calibration of Rozhen chromospheric telescope

Development of automated data collection and storage systems

Implementation of machine learning models for solar feature recognition

Abstract

We present the bilateral collaboration between Bulgarian and Austrian solar and space weather researchers on the topic of chromospheric and coronal activity. This new project will focus, on one hand, on the technical setup and calibration of the new Rozhen chromospheric telescope at the National Astronomical Observatory (NAO) by means of establishing optimal observational programs for different quiet-Sun and activity phenomena, automating the data collection and storage, implementing machine/deep learning models for feature recognition. The second aim is to carry out joint scientific analyses of solar phenomena using observations from ground-based instruments in both countries, and supplementary spacecraft data. The successful implementation of solar monitoring at NAO-Rozhen will facilitate the overall visibility of the Bulgarian instrument and generate interest towards astronomy and solar physics not only for PhD students and young scientists but also for the general public.