Solar Instrumentation. An Introduction

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

Solar instrumentation is a vast field -- it embraces all experimental means to research the Sun. At an observatory -- the most comprehensive entity -- several facilities may be operated. Each facility includes a telescope, sometimes a specialized telescope, which is equipped with one or several post-focus instruments, like spectrographs and filtergraphs, and detectors. The equipment is controlled by specific hardware and software. The collected data is analyzed using equally specialized software packages. An observatory may be ground based or space based. All have in common that their prime use is for solar research; research on nighttime sources is rarely done with these instruments. Most of the time, the equipment collects and detects electromagnetic radiation throughout its entire range from gamma rays to the radio regime. There are also facilities which detect other particles; e.g., the Neutrino observatories or in situ solar wind analysis instruments on spacecraft. In this lecture we shall confine ourselves only to ground based solar instrumentation related to electromagnetic field detection. Instrumentation plays a prominent role in the process of physical understanding. The observation is the essence of experimental solar physics. What can be observed with which precision and accuracy depends mainly on instrumental capabilities, which are driven by technological innovations outside the area of solar physics and even astrophysics. A good example are modern, moderately priced solid state detectors which would have been impossible without their use in consumer electronics. The interpretation of the results from observations leads to new insights in the form of improved physical models of the Sun, which in turn stimulated better understanding of physics as a whole.

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