The Focal Plane Package for the Solar Optical Telescope on Solar-B

Computer Science – Performance

Scientific paper

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7507 Chromosphere, 7524 Magnetic Fields, 7529 Photosphere, 7594 Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

Solar-B is a Japanese space science mission of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Sciences (ISAS), with major participation of US and UK research groups. The mission includes the 50-cm aperture Solar Optical Telescope (SOT), with its Focal Plane Package (FPP) designed for high resolution photospheric and chromospheric imaging and spectro-polarimetry. There are also two coronal instruments, the X-Ray Telescope and Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer. Solar-B will be launched into a Sun-synchronous polar orbit in August, 2005. The SOT is provided by ISAS and is being built by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and Mitsubishi Electric Co. A team of Lockheed Martin, High Altitude Observatory (HAO), and NAOJ scientists and engineers are designing the FPP instrument. This talk gives an overview of the science goals of the FPP as well as the current instrument design and performance characteristics. The primary goal is to understand the coupling between the fine magnetic structures in the photosphere and dynamic processes and heating in the chromosphere and corona. The FPP consists of a narrow-band tunable birefringent filter imager, broad-band interference filter imager, and spectro-polarimeter (SP), essentially a space version of the HAO Advanced Stokes Polarimeter. The image is stabilized by a correlation tracker and active tilt mirror. The SP makes vector magnetic measurements from Stokes spectra of the Fe I lines 630.1 and 630.2 nm, with 0.16 arcsec pixels and field of view up to 164 x 328 arcsec. The broad-band system takes diffraction-limited images (0.05 arcsec pixels) in the Ca II H line, CN and G bandheads, and continuum bands. The narrow-band system makes filtergrams, magnetograms, Dopplergrams, and Stokes images in several photospheric lines, Mg b, and H-alpha. It has 0.08 arcsec pixels and field-of-view same as that of the SP. The SP and filter imagers will usually observe simultaneously on the same target region. High-level observing sequences and coordination with the other instruments will be managed by FPP science planners, similar to those of SXT and TRACE. The FPP project is supported by NASA (NAS8-01002).

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