Gave my AGU talk today
Lots of stuff
happened.
Monday afternoon, I returned to my hotel room to
start work on my presentation, without penetrating particles. I had to finish
it in order to turn it in on Tuesday afternoon at the Speaker Ready
Room.
I didn't really start work on the
presentation until around 4 PM, and at 6 PM, I had dinner at the hotel
restaurant -- fried calamari, filet mignon, and a molten chocolate cake with ice
cream and raspberry sauce. I worked for the rest of the night on the
presentation, going to sleep around 4 AM after finishing it. Woke up late on
Tuesday morning, got to the convention center to attend part of the second
morning session of solar and heliospheric presentations, then had lunch in the
Riverwalk with Eric C. and Rick L. Turned in my presentation at 2:15 PM,
including some edits to make sure it worked on the AGU
Macs.
I returned to my room Tuesday
afternoon to rest and wash up. New Orleans is still hot and humid. Went to the
French Quarter for a visit between 5 and 6 PM, and then returned to the hotel to
meet with Debby, Andrew, Dick and Sandy, Mark, and Rick L., to go out to dinner
at Mr. B's Bistro. At dinner, Rick worried that the hard proton spectra for the
Jan 20 event, extending to high energies, would cause significant suppression in
livetime in such a way that the cutoffs and charge states are thus biased
downward, resulting in the anomalously low Q(Fe) for this event, compared with
Fe/O.
Returned to my room and worked
until 4-5 AM Wednesday morning (this morning) on the notes for my presentation.
(iChatted with family around 11 PM.) I also worked on the SAMPEX livetime issue
and found that the livetime suppression is comparable to other large SEP events
with high Q(Fe), so I doubt livetime is a serious issue. I also concluded that
it would take a 3 degree shift in Fe cutoff invariant latitude to get Q(Fe)=20,
which is rather extreme.
I rehearsed my
talk multiple times before going to bed at 5 AM, trying to memorize the words to
go with each slide. Memorization didn't work all that well, although it worked
well enough that I knew what topics to discuss with each
slide.
This morning, I woke up at 9 AM,
after hitting the snooze button for an hour after 8 AM. I rehearsed my talk in
the shower and after the shower, finding it took at least 15 minutes, but I
figured that I'd get nervous and talk quickly and drop sentences during the
actual talk.
Went to the convention
center and caught the second morning SH session, including Dick's talk on the
Jan 20 event (spectra and space weather implications). Went to lunch at Mulates
(Cajun food) with Rick L. and Eric
C.
Returned to attend the first
afternoon SH session. Heard Bob L.'s talk on RHESSI gamma ray observations of
the Jan 20 event. Based on the fact that the gamma ray emissions and the proton
spectra have the same spectral index of -2.2 to -2.3, he thinks the particles
are flare accelerated. Dick notes that the particles arrived so quickly after
the x-ray flare event that it's hard for shock acceleration to accelerate ions
in so short a time.
I gave my talk at
2:15 PM, concluding from element abundance ratios (Fe/O and Ne/O) and ionic
charge states (Q(Fe) = ~12) that the material is coronal, not
flare.
My talk went relatively
smoothly, so that I touched all my bases in the 15 minutes allotted. Only
Thomas Zurbuchen asked a question, and it was a hard, PhD-defense-like question:
He notes that charge states in solar wind also correlate with Fe/O, just as they
do in my CMEs. Correlation results in changes of a factor of 2, not orders of
magnitude. Did I have any thoughts on a possible connection? I didn't
know.
Afterward, Rick again voiced
concerns that livetime was causing bias in the Q-states measurements. I thought
it was unlikely to be such an issue that it will change our general results, but
I left open the possibility of looking into it afterward. Alan C. thought
Thomas' question was incredibly hard and that I might have fallen over. Dick
said I did well and touched on everything I needed to
do.
Returned to my hotel room. Had
dinner in the French Quarter (Deanies seafood).
Posted: Wed - May 25, 2005 at 09:41 PM