I made my first full-scale, full-color simulation image today. I had to add some functionality to my filespecs.java code, adding the capability to set a value to zero if it lies on the interior of the star. I then completed the plot using IDL, by using color table 37.

In addition, I began work on a program to do the interpolation of points in java instead of going over to Windows to use Origin every time. So far I only have the method to fill in the points of an incomplete 2D matrix, but it looks fairly effective and I hope to have the entire thing up tomorrow.

I made my first contour plot today. The steps for creation are as follows:

• Aquire .dat file from Marc Gagne
• Run reader.java on the .dat file (prefferable renamed as a .txt file)
• Make a 2D array from the 1D array for the desired parameter using the Origin app.
• Run filespecs.java on the output 2D array text file and on the reader.java output file to put the appropriate file specs on the 2D array file
• Run reader.pro on that output file, and ba-da-bing, contour plot!

After getting ahold of Marc Gagne's code, and realizing that IDL is awful at running loops, especially nested loops, I wrote my own program in Java that reads in data from a text file and trims it down to the window size desired, then outputs that data to another (readable) text file. While his code may have run effectively, it would have taken hours (not minutes) and then it saved the data into a proprietary format which emacs cannot read, so I would have had no idea if what I was doing was even right. The data output is in 3 columns presently: x, y, and T, although adding the B, V, and density fields won't be difficult from here.

In order to make a contour plot, however, I need T in a 2-D array. Shupe suggested using Origin (PC only) to convert it, then I can read the new array in with IDL and use its simple contour plotting commands to make my first plots.

Solved David's test problem for the week:

• What velocity is needed to give a shock temperature of 10⁶K?

I also read Stephanie Tonnesen's ('03) senior thesis, X-Ray Emission Line Profiles from the Magnetically Confined Wind Shock Model. Since my work will be an extension of hers, this reading is highly relevant and will provide direction for how to go about my work.

I finally got my hands on some IDL code and bashed my head against it for a while to no avail.

This morning I posted the summaries for the articles I read on sunday: Magnetically Controlled Circumstellar Matter in the Helium-Strong Stars by Shore and Brown; and Magnetic Channeling of Radiatively Driven Hot-Star Winds by Owocki, Townsend, and ud-Doula.

I also read through and summarized Dynamical Simulations of Magnetically Channeled Line-Driven Stellar Winds. I. Isothermal, Nonrotating, Radially Driven Flow by ud-Doula and Owocki, as well as The Magnetic Field and Wind Confinement of &theta¹ Orionis C by Donati, Bable, Harries, Howarth, Petit, and Semel.

Read Chandra HETGS Multi-phase Spectroscopy of the Young Magnetic O Star &theta¹ Ori C by Gagne, Oksala, Cohen, Tonnesen ('03), ud-Doula, Owocki, Townsend, and MacFarlane, as well as posted a summary for it.

Also read On Periodic X-Ray Emission from theta1 Ori C by Babel and Montmerle and posted a summary for that as well.

In addtion, I made some modifications to the website, including adding summaries to the list of journal articles that I've read. I also created a skeleton for the main page, which now has links to what will be pages for my IDL code and images, as well of course to this journal and my articles page.