Computer Science – Performance
Scientific paper
May 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agusmsp41b..05b&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2008, abstract #SP41B-05
Computer Science
Performance
7529 Photosphere, 7537 Solar And Stellar Variability (1650), 7538 Solar Irradiance, 7594 Instruments And Techniques
Scientific paper
On September 13 2007, the Solar Bolometric Imager (SBI) successfully observed the Sun for several hours while suspended from a balloon in the stratosphere above New Mexico. The SBI represents a totally new approach in finding the sources of the solar irradiance variation. The SBI detector is an array of 320x240 thermal IR elements whose spectral absorptance has been extended and flattened by a deposited layer of gold-black. The telescope is a 30-cm Dall-Kirkham with uncoated primary and secondary Pyrex mirrors. The combination of telescope and bolometric array provide an image of the Sun with a constant spectral response between ~ 280 and 2600 nm, over a field of view of 960 x 720 arcsec with a pixel size of 3 arcsec. This is the second successful flight of SBI, following a successful one on September 2003 which produced the first measurements in broad band of the center-to-limb variation of bolometric facular contrast (a flight attempt from Antarctica in 2006 was aborted). This latest flight provided bolometric (integrated light) maps of the solar photosphere during a time of minimum of solar activity. The SBI imagery will enable us to evaluate the photometric contribution of weak magnetic structures (e.g. network) more accurately than has been achievable with spectrally selective imaging over restricted wavebands. It will also enable us to investigate the presence, if any, of other thermal structures unrelated to magnetic activity, such as e.g. giant cells and pole-to-equator temperature gradients. During the 16 hour flight the SBI gathered several thousand bolometric images that are now being processed to produce full-disk maps of spatial variation in total solar output at solar minimum. The SBI flight is also providing important engineering data to validate the space worthiness of the novel gold-blackened thermal array detectors. In this paper we will briefly describe the characteristics of the SBI, its in-flight performance, and we will present the first results of the analysis of the bolometric images.
Bernasconi Pietro N.
Eaton H. H.
Foukal Peter V.
Noble Michael
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