Remote Sensing Over the Sun's Poles: Much More than Just Context Imaging

Both Solar Orbiter and Solar Probe will provide an unprecedented vantage point over the Sun's poles providing a unique opportunity for to make revolutionary improvements in our understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the acceleration of the solar wind and the heating of the solar corona. Remote sensing observations are critical to this endeavor, not only by providing context for the in-situ observations from the point of view of the local spacecraft environment, but also for comprehensive success in identifying and understanding the magnetic source regions at the surface. Only with simultaneous imaging of the fine scale structures through which both the Solar Orbiter and Solar Probe spacecraft are flying, will we be able to resolve the inherent ambiguities in the interpretation of spatial and temporal changes seen in the in-situ measurements. Moreover, only surface imaging of the polar magnetic structures will enable us to trace and definitively link the detailed structure observed in these solar wind streams back to their source regions at the solar surface. Finally, remote sensing observations of the Sun's poles will also enable us to make order-of-magnitude improvements in our understanding of the polar photospheric magnetic field, the magnetic origins of the solar cycle, and the mysteries of the solar dynamo.