2018
Ref: CTALK-2018-0071

Zooming in on the coronal poles with Solar Orbiter

Berghmans, David ; Seaton, Dan ; West, Matthew


Talk presented at Polar Perspectives Conference on 2018-09-26

Abstract: The ESA Solar Orbiter mission is designed to determine how the Sun creates and controls the heliosphere. The spacecraft will bring a combination of in situ and remote sensing instruments out of the ecliptic (>30°) and close to the sun (0.3 solar-radii). The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager is part of the remote-sensing package of Solar Orbiter, which will be operated during 3 periods of ten days during each 168-day orbit, nominally corresponding to perihelion and maximal solar latitude north and south. The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager is itself a suite of three UV and EUV telescopes that observe the solar atmosphere both globally as well as at very high resolution. EUI’s passbands cover the full range of conditions from the chromosphere to the outer corona. Thus EUI will observe and analyze the global morphology and local dynamics of the solar atmosphere, in particular at the base of the corona. A Full Sun Imager (FSI), working at the 17.4 nm and 30.4 nm EUV passbands, named “FSI174/304”, will provide a global view of the solar atmosphere and is therefore an essential building block for the “connection science” in the key science questions of the Solar Orbiter mission. FSI will provide the connection between the in-situ instruments and the remote sensing instruments that observe the solar surface and outer corona. The FSI FOV is large enough that the full solar disk remains in the field of view, even for maximal off-points by Solar Orbiter. This large FOV and the FSI’s high sensitivity will allow to image the “transition corona” where the topology of streamers and pseudo-streamers fades in the solar wind. Furthermore, FSI will be the first to image this from a polar perspective. FSI will also play an important supportive role when the spacecraft is located at the far side of the Sun: FSI images of the solar back-side showing the location of coronal holes and active regions will support the interpretation of in-situ solar wind data. Here we focus on the polar observations that EUI, and in particular FSI, will make from its out-of-ecliptic perspective. By manipulating existing EUV observations taken from within the ecliptic we anticipate the issues and opportunities that true polar observations will bring us.

Keyword(s): corona ; Solar Orbiter
Links: link


The record appears in these collections:
Conference Contributions & Seminars > Conference Talks > Contributed Talks
Royal Observatory of Belgium > Solar Physics & Space Weather (SIDC)
Solar-Terrestrial Centre of Excellence



 Record created 2018-10-03, last modified 2018-10-03


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