First Results Of The Solar Bolometric Imager

On September 1 2003, 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 mission provided the first bolometric (integrated light) maps of the solar photosphere, that will allow to evaluate the photometric contribution of magnetic structures more accurately than has been achievable with spectrally selective imaging over restricted wavebands. The more accurate removal of the magnetic features contribution will enable us to determine if solar irradiance variation mechanisms exist other than the effects of photospheric magnetism. The SBI detector was an array of 320 x 240 thermal IR elements whose spectral absorptance has been extended and flattened by a deposited layer of gold-black. The telescope was a 30-cm Dall-Kirkham with uncoated primary and secondary pyrex mirrors. The combination of telescope and bolometric array provided an image of the Sun with a flat spectral response between 0.28 and 2.6 microns, over a field of view of 917 x 687 arcsec with a pixel size of 2.8 arcsec. The observing platform was the gondola previously used for the Flare Genesis Experiment (FGE), retrofitted to house and control the SBI telescope and detector. During the 9 hours of flight the SBI gathered several thousand bolometric images that are now being processed to produce the first maps of the total solar irradiance. The SBI flight is also providing important engineering data to validate the space worthiness of the novel gold-blackened thermal array detectors, and to verify the thermal performance of the SBI's uncoated optics in a vacuum environment. 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. This work was funded by NASA under grant# NAG5-10998.