Narrow Field Imager (NFI) for the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH)
Abstract
The Narrow Field Imager (NFI) is a coronagraph designed as part of Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) to providing the first complete, photometric, high-resolution views of the corona/solar wind transition. The PUNCH payload also includes three Wide Field Imagers (WFIs) heliospheric images provided by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). Together, these instruments form a single "virtual instrument" covering the entire inner solar system continuously from 6 to 180 R⊙ (1.5°-45° solar elongation). Each instrument will be hosted on a 1+3 microsatellite constellation deployed into sun-synchronous LEO. NFI implements a high heritage coronagraph design to observe the inner heliosphere from 5.4 - 32 Rʘ with an annular, sun-centered FOV. NFI achieves the PUNCH required performance within the microsatellite mission concept with a simplified design that exploits heritage from previous space-borne coronagraphs, including SOHO/LASCO C3 and STEREO/SECCHI, and extensive design effort for the similar NOAA Compact Coronagraph (CCOR). We prototyped and tested the NFI stray-light suppression assembly (SSA) at NRL which confirms the expected performance of the SSA and demonstrates the simplified NFI design for the specific application to PUNCH.
This work was sponsored by NASA and the Chief of Naval Research.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMSH41E3300C
- Keywords:
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- 2494 Instruments and techniques;
- IONOSPHERE;
- 2794 Instruments and techniques;
- MAGNETOSPHERIC PHYSICS;
- 7594 Instruments and techniques;
- SOLAR PHYSICS;
- ASTROPHYSICS;
- AND ASTRONOMY;
- 7894 Instruments and techniques;
- SPACE PLASMA PHYSICS