Award for MPS-Director
Prof. Dr. Sami K. Solanki receives the Zdenĕk Švetska Senior Prize for his pioneering contributions to solar research.
The Solar Physics Division of the European Physical Society (EPS) has honored Prof. Dr. Sami K. Solanki, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), with the Zdenĕk Švetska Senior Prize. The award recognizes the leading role that the Göttingen scientist has for decades played in solar research. During this time, Solanki not only enriched his field of research with significant results regarding the Sun's magnetism and activity, but also played a key role in shaping and advancing crucial space missions. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Sunrise balloon mission, which has completed three successful stratospheric flights since 2009, capturing unique observational data from the Sun.
When striving to unravel the Sun’s secrets, one has to take a very close look: at tiny eruptions of radiation in its atmosphere as well as at huge solar flares; at the smallest structures of its magnetic field as well as at huge sunspots, dark areas with extremely high magnetic field strength; at changes that take place within seconds and minutes as well as much slower rhythms in our star’s activity spanning decades and even centuries. A sophisticated research infrastructure is needed to understand how all these phenomena arise and, in their entirety, make up the nature of our dynamic star: powerful solar telescopes on Earth, space probes with highly specialized instruments and balloon missions. With the Zdenĕk Švetska Senior Prize, the EPS recognizes, among other things, Solanki's ongoing commitment to initiating, shaping and advancing such infrastructure projects.
A look at the Sun, into the past and deep into space
One of the most adventurous contributions to current solar research is the Sunrise mission. Under Solanki’s leadership, last summer the balloon-borne solar observatory, which is around seven meters high, successfully completed its third research flight through the stratosphere. Carried by a giant helium balloon, it enjoys an unobstructed view of the Sun, completely free of the disruptive air turbulences in the atmosphere below. In this way, Sunrise has captured the most detailed data to date from the region just below the Sun’s visible surface up to an altitude of around 2000 kilometers above. The large amount of unique data is currently being analyzed.
ESA’s space mission Solar Orbiter, in which the MPS is involved with four scientific instruments, offers a completely different view of our star. Led by Solanki, the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) was developed and built at MPS. The instrument measures, among other things, the magnetic field at the visible surface. Since February 2020, Solar Orbiter has been orbiting our star on elongated ellipses, repeatedly approaching the fireball to just a third of the distance between Earth and the Sun. From this observation position, in recent years the highest-resolution images of the corona, the Sun's outer atmosphere, have been taken. Among other things, they show that the smallest flares, known as campfires, occur much more frequently there than previously assumed. Observational data from PHI indicate their origin for the first time: small, closely neighboring regions of opposite magnetic polarity on the solar surface. When these regions restructure, the energy released is discharged and contributes to the heating of the corona with its more than one million degrees.
“With current missions such as Solar Orbiter and Sunrise III, we have the opportunity to understand more precisely than ever before how the Sun's magnetic field drives and shapes its activity,” said Solanki.
This year, the Sun has impressively demonstrated that a deeper understanding of solar activity is also important for the smooth operation of terrestrial infrastructure. In May and early October, solar eruptions were so strong that auroras could even be seen over Göttingen. In the worst-case scenario, such solar storms can also pose a threat to satellites and power grids. In order to be able to better predict events of this kind in the future, ESA’s space probe Vigil is to keep watch in space from 2027 and provide early warning. The Photospheric Magnetic Field Imager (PMI) for the mission is currently being developed and built at the MPS.
Solanki's research also places our Sun in a larger context. “Even the best telescopes on Earth or in space only offer us a snapshot of our star, a tiny section of its existence over billions of years,” the researcher said. In order to understand what behavior the Sun is capable of in principle, Solanki looks into the past of our star. For example, precise examinations of the rings of centuries-old trees allow us to estimate how dynamic and active our star was in the past. It is also helpful to take a look at our star's “peer group”, the large cohort of sun-like stars. A research group led by Solanki was able to show that our Sun is currently one of the more tame representatives of its kind.
About the laureate and the prize
Solanki's research and teaching activities have shaped the field of solar research for decades. Solanki is the author of more than 600 scientific publications and has supervised more than 44 doctoral students. He has also been the spokesperson for the International Max Planck Research School for Solar System Science (“Solar System School” for short) for 22 years, which, in cooperation with the University of Göttingen and the TU Braunschweig, leads young researchers to a doctorate as part of a structured doctoral program.
Sami K. Solanki studied and completed his doctorate at ETH Zurich. In the following years, research stays took him to St. Andrews University in Scotland, back to ETH and to the University of Oulu in Finland. Since 1999, Solanki has been Director at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, which was then still called the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy. In 2009, he was appointed Distinguished Professor by Kyung Hee University in South Korea. Solanki's numerous honors include the George Ellery Hale Prize of the American Astronomical Society (2022), an honorary doctorate from the University of Oulu (2017), the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics (2016) and the Julius Bartels Medal of the European Geosciences Union (2015).
With the Zdenĕk Švetska Senior Prize, every three years the Solar Physics Division of the European Physical Society honors researchers who have had a lasting impact on the field of solar physics over the course of their entire scientific career. The prize is named in honor of the Czech solar researcher Zdenĕk Švetska, who laid important foundations for research into solar flares in the second half of the last century.