The Contribution of the Metis Coronagraph to the Synergies of Solar Orbiter with the Parker Solar Probe Mission
Abstract
The ESA-NASA Solar Orbiter mission (Müller et al. 2013) is foreseen to overlap the forthcoming NASA Parker Solar Probe (PSP) space mission (Fox et al. 2016), that will carry in situ instrumentation very close to the Sun in the ecliptic plane.
The Metis coronagraph onboard Solar Orbiter (Antonucci et al. 2012) has a field of view (FoV) spanning over a wide range of heliocentric distances owing to the spacecraft eccentric orbit. Its measurements allow a complete characterization of the main properties and dynamics of the most important constituents of the coronal and solar wind plasma, that is, the electron component and the proton component. Metis has the capability, when allowed by the geometry of the orbits of the two spacecraft, to image the coronal regions crossed by the PSP during its transit close to the Sun and characterize the properties of the plasma environment sampled locally by the spacecraft in its journey around the Sun. This is particularly important in the case of coronal mass ejections, whose propagation and evolution can be followed out to the orbit of the Parker Solar Probe ( 9 RSun, minimum perihelion), when Solar Orbiter is at 0.8 AU and Metis FoV ranges from 4.2 to 12 RSun. For instance, there is the interesting opportunity of comparing the electron densities derived from the VL pB images of Metis with those measured in situ by PSP. The Parker Probe during its closest approach to the Sun will provide information on the local temperature of protons, which still preserve the value attained in the region where the decoupling from the H I atoms occurred (D'Amicis et al. 2007). This information is the measure of the neutral hydrogen atoms velocity distribution, whose knowledge is necessary for the derivation of the solar wind H I outflow velocity through the Doppler dimming technique from UV and VL images (e.g., Dolei et al. 2018).- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMSH43B3705S
- Keywords:
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- 2169 Solar wind sources;
- INTERPLANETARY PHYSICSDE: 7509 Corona;
- SOLAR PHYSICS;
- ASTROPHYSICS;
- AND ASTRONOMYDE: 7845 Particle acceleration;
- SPACE PLASMA PHYSICSDE: 7894 Instruments and techniques;
- SPACE PLASMA PHYSICS