Preliminary Observations and Results from the WISPR Instrument on the PSP
Abstract
We present the plans and preliminary observations of the corona for the WISPR instrument on the PSP mission. Observing the corona/solar wind from 0.25 AU to the perihelion distance of 35 Rsun is absolutely unique, but present challenges due to the rapidly changing radial distance. WISPR, a heliospheric imager type of instrument, consists of two telescopes, which together observe along the ecliptic plane from 13.5 to 108 degrees from the Sun. This range of elongations encompasses the Thomson circle (the locus of points of maximum scattering efficiency) thereby enabling remote observations of structures close to the Sun to local observations of structures close to the spacecraft. Three different types of observations are envisioned: synoptic full field, partial field high cadence shock studies and partial field turbulence studies. The last one, unique to coronagraphic instruments, is a 10 second cadence of images for which a power spectrum of intensity or electron density will be created to see where wave energy is being deposited. In these preliminary images we anticipate that the views will be quite different as PSP plunges into the corona than the view from 1 AU. The spatial resolution will be greatly increased as we fly through the coronal structures and will reveal fine-scale details such as fluctuations in the plasma sheet, perhaps indicating individual flux tubes or magnetic islands or maybe something unexpected. The vantage point will remove a large fraction of the circumsolar dust contributing to the F-corona, perhaps revealing the first dust to sublimate. To prepare for the mission, techniques have been developed to determine the background, track features that are moving through the field of view, among others. We will present the observations and the preliminary results.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the NASA Parker Solar Probe WISPR program.- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMSH42A..04H
- Keywords:
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- 2134 Interplanetary magnetic fields;
- INTERPLANETARY PHYSICSDE: 2164 Solar wind plasma;
- INTERPLANETARY PHYSICSDE: 2169 Solar wind sources;
- INTERPLANETARY PHYSICSDE: 7509 Corona;
- SOLAR PHYSICS;
- ASTROPHYSICS;
- AND ASTRONOMY