AAS 246: Day 4

Editor’s Note: This week we’re at the 246th AAS meeting in Anchorage, AK, and online. Along with a team of authors from Astrobites, we will be writing updates on selected events at the meeting and posting each day. Follow along here or at astrobites.com for daily summaries, or follow @astrobites.bsky.social on Bluesky for more coverage. The usual posting schedule for AAS Nova will resume on June 16th.

Table of Contents:

• Solar Physics Division Plenary: Karen Harvey Prize Lecture: Building Connections in Heliophysics with Surface Flux Transport Modeling, Lisa Upton
• Public Policy Plenary: The Current Landscape for Science Policy and How YOU Can Make a Difference

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Solar Physics Division Plenary: Karen Harvey Prize Lecture: Building Connections in Heliophysics with Surface Flux Transport Modeling, Lisa Upton (by Kerry Hensley)

The 2025 Karen Harvey Prize, “awarded in recognition of a significant contribution to the study of the Sun early in a person’s professional career,” went to Lisa Upton (Southwest Research Institute) for her work on large-scale solar flows and magnetic flux transport. Upton began by honoring Karen Harvey, with whom she shares many scientific interests. Harvey’s interest in solar physics began as a teenager observing sunspots with a small telescope, which led to her first scientific paper. She is remembered for her service to the solar physics community, her spirit of collaboration, and her education and public outreach efforts.

Upton began by studying coronal loops — arches of plasma confined by magnetic fields and suspended within the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona — before transitioning to her current work on the solar activity cycle. The Sun’s 11-year activity cycle, which manifests as periodic changes in the frequency of sunspots, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections, is intimately related to the Sun’s complex magnetic field. The Sun’s interior acts like a fluid, allowing the magnetic field to be frozen into the plasma, meaning that the motion and evolution of the magnetic field is largely dictated by the behavior of the plasma. As Upton noted, this is unlike anything we see on Earth.

How the Sun’s magnetic field explains the existence of the solar cycle is described by the Babcock dynamo model. In this model, the differential rotation of the Sun — the faster rotation of the Sun at its equator than at its poles — stretches the submerged magnetic field and makes it stronger. The field then becomes buoyant and causes sunspots to emerge at the Sun’s surface. The turbulent convective motion of the Sun that cycles material from the interior to the surface causes the surface magnetic flux to spread out, eventually being transported to the poles, where it cancels out the old magnetic field and creates a new field pointing in the opposite direction. This starts the solar cycle anew.

Upton described her research, which has covered a remarkably broad range of topics within solar physics. For example, she has studied large-scale flows, leading to the discovery of the long-sought-after giant cells. She also described her work on surface flux transport modeling, simulating the emergence and decay of magnetic flux through the solar surface. By incorporating observations of extreme-ultraviolet light from the far side of the Sun, Upton and collaborators greatly improved models of solar active regions emerging on the far side. More recently, Upton has been working to connect phenomena on the solar surface to the solar corona and beyond, working to predict the appearance of the solar corona during a solar eclipse, among other projects. She has also worked to generate realistic synthetic solar active regions, enabling both predictions of active region behavior as well as historical reproductions of the Sun’s appearance going back 200 years. Looking forward, she hopes to extend her research to the study of activity on other stars, where we see starspots far larger than anything on the Sun.

To close, Upton emphasized the need to remain united, support each other, and advocate for science as we navigate the challenging conditions in the world today.

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Public Policy Plenary: The Current Landscape for Science Policy and How YOU Can Make a Difference (by Lucas Brown)

To finish out a wonderful week at AAS 246, we heard from a panel of AAS leadership and participants in the recent AAS Congressional Visits Day on ways to make a difference in today’s current science policy landscape. First, we heard from AAS Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Director of External Affairs and Public Policy Joel Parriott, who provided an overview of what AAS’s stated science policy priorities are — focusing on the Society’s top priority of addressing the significant global issues that affect astronomy. A common theme that echoed throughout the plenary was that the advancement of these goals requires the advocacy and voices of as many people as possible.

Next, AAS Deputy Director of Public Policy Roohi Dalal spoke about the current state of science policy — from the large amount of proposed budget cuts we have seen come from the federal government over the past six months to the actions of the AAS in advocating for funding astronomy research. Specifically, AAS launched a “share your story” campaign to highlight the human impact of these cuts and has interfaced directly with representatives and their staff through initiatives like Congressional Visits Day. Dalal’s talk once again returned to the idea that the AAS needs everyone’s voice to make change.

AAS President Dara Norman then took the stage to explain in greater detail what actions people can take in supporting the policy goals of the Society and astronomy more broadly. Her top recommendation was to pay attention to AAS action alerts, which provide detailed instructions as to what actions will have the most impact at any given moment. Right now one of those top actions is to get in contact with local elected officials either via email, phone, or through an in-person meeting.

After Norman’s speech, the plenary transformed into a panel discussion featuring Lori Porter from Columbia University, Becka Phillipson from Villanova University, and Marcel Agüeros also from Columbia University, all of whom participated in this year’s Congressional Visits Day program. They spoke about the real impact that these sort of one-on-one visits with congressional staff or representatives can have, and shared tips on how to approach communicating effectively during such a visit. Their words of advice once again underscored the power of people’s voices in ensuring the future of astronomy remains bright.

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