ASPIICS, a giant externally occulted coronagraph for the PROBA-3 formation flyer mission
Abstract
Formation flyers open new perspectives and allow to conceive giant externally-occulted coronagraphs using a two-component space system with the external occulter on one spacecraft and the optical instrument on the other spacecraft at approximately 100 m from the first one ASPIICS Association de Satellites Pour l Imagerie et l Interferometrie de la Couronne Solaire is a mission proposed to ESA in the framework of the PROBA-3 program of formation flyers which is presently in phase A to exploit this technique for coronal observations ASPIICS is composed of a single coronagraph which performs high spatial resolution imaging of the corona as well as 2-dimensional spectroscopy of several emission lines from the coronal base out to 3 Rs The selected lines allow to address different coronal regions the forbidden line of FeXIV at 530 285 nm coronal matter Fe IX X at 637 4 nm coronal holes HeI at 587 6 cold matter An additional broad spectral channel will image the white light corona and derive electron densities The classical design of an externally occulted coronagraph is adapted to the detection of the very inner corona as close as 1 01 Rs and the addition of a Fabry-Perot interferometer using a so-called etalon ASPIICS will address the question of the coronal heating and the role of waves by characterizing propagating fluctuations waves and turbulence in the solar wind acceleration region and by looking for oscillations in the intensity and Doppler shift of spectral lines The combined imaging and spectral diagnostics capabilities available with ASPIICS
- Publication:
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36th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- 2006
- Bibcode:
- 2006cosp...36.3063V