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 space science mission of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and a NASA Solar Terrestrial Probes mission. It 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, 2006. The SOT is provided by JAXA 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 have built the FPP instrument. This paper gives an overview of the science goals of the FPP as well as the instrument 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, Na D, and H-alpha, similar to the SOUP filter at La Palma. It has 0.08 arcsec pixels and field-of-view same as that of the SP. SOT and FPP have been calibrated in great detail and have observed the sun in two end-to-end tests at NAOJ. Sample results of these observations will be shown. Observing programs and coordination with the other instruments and observatories during the mission will be managed by SOT/FPP science planners, similar to those of SOHO and TRACE. The FPP project is supported by NASA (NAS8-01002).

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