Paul J. Wright

Anna Jungbluth, Xavier Gitiaux, Shane A. Maloney et al.

Breakthroughs in our understanding of physical phenomena have traditionally followed improvements in instrumentation. Studies of the magnetic field of the Sun, and its influence on the solar dynamo and space weather events, have benefited from improvements in resolution and measurement frequency of new instruments. However, in order to fully understand the solar cycle, high-quality data across time-scales longer than the typical lifespan of a solar instrument are required. At the moment, discrepancies between measurement surveys prevent the combined use of all available data. In this work, we show that machine learning can help bridge the gap between measurement surveys by learning to super-resolve low-resolution magnetic field images and translate between characteristics of contemporary instruments in orbit. We also introduce the notion of physics-based metrics and losses for super-resolution to preserve underlying physics and constrain the solution space of possible super-resolution outputs.

Xavier Gitiaux, Shane A. Maloney, Anna Jungbluth et al.

Machine learning techniques have been successfully applied to super-resolution tasks on natural images where visually pleasing results are sufficient. However in many scientific domains this is not adequate and estimations of errors and uncertainties are crucial. To address this issue we propose a Bayesian framework that decomposes uncertainties into epistemic and aleatoric uncertainties. We test the validity of our approach by super-resolving images of the Sun's magnetic field and by generating maps measuring the range of possible high resolution explanations compatible with a given low resolution magnetogram.

Richard Galvez, David F. Fouhey, Meng Jin et al.

In this paper we present a curated dataset from the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) mission in a format suitable for machine learning research. Beginning from level 1 scientific products we have processed various instrumental corrections, downsampled to manageable spatial and temporal resolutions, and synchronized observations spatially and temporally. We illustrate the use of this dataset with two example applications: forecasting future EVE irradiance from present EVE irradiance and translating HMI observations into AIA observations. For each application we provide metrics and baselines for future model comparison. We anticipate this curated dataset will facilitate machine learning research in heliophysics and the physical sciences generally, increasing the scientific return of the SDO mission. This work is a direct result of the 2018 NASA Frontier Development Laboratory Program. Please see the appendix for access to the dataset.