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Optical alignment of the Solar Orbiter EUI flight instrument
Auchère, F.; Jacques, L.; Schühle, U. +12 more
The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument for the Solar Orbiter mission will image the solar corona in the extreme ultraviolet (17.1 nm and 30.4 nm) and in the vacuum ultraviolet (121.6 nm). It is composed of three channels, each one containing a telescope. Two of these channels are high resolution imagers (HRI) at respectively 17.1 nm (HRI-…
Alignment procedure for the Gregorian telescope of the Metis coronagraph for the Solar Orbiter ESA mission
Susino, Roberto; Antonucci, Ester; Fineschi, Silvano +20 more
Metis is a solar coronagraph mounted on-board the Solar Orbiter ESA spacecraft. Solar Orbiter is scheduled for launch in February 2020 and it is dedicated to study the solar and heliospheric physics from a privileged close and inclined orbit around the Sun. Perihelion passages with a minimum distance of 0.28 AU are foreseen. Metis features two cha…
Optical performance of the Metis coronagraph on the Solar Orbiter ESA mission
Susino, Roberto; Antonucci, Ester; Fineschi, Silvano +19 more
The Metis coronagraph aboard the Solar Orbiter ESA spacecraft is expected to provide new insights into the solar dynamics. In detail, it is designed to address three main questions: the energy deposition mechanism at the poles (where the fast wind is originated), the source of the slow wind at lower altitude, and how the global corona evolves, in …
Lifetime of channel electron multiplier detectors dedicated to plasma instruments for Solar Orbiter and JUICE space missions
André, N.; Fedorov, A.; Grigoriev, A. +2 more
Both Solar Orbiter and Jupiter Icy moon Explorer (JUICE) are long-life ESA missions, which should work in extremely difficult space environment. A very high thermal load up to 13 Solar constants will affect Solar Orbiter, and JUICE will experience a high penetration radiation influence in the Jupiter magnetosphere. The plasma packages of these mis…
A steep bandpass interference filter with FWHM 11nm centered at 1254nm for studying Lyman Alpha signatures of highly redshifted galaxies
Herrero, A.; Marín-Franch, A.; Guzmán, R. +9 more
The presented new 1% narrowband filter centered at 1254nm with a FWHM of 11nm required and achieved excellent maximum transmission and deep out of band blocking. Magnetron sputtering was used for the filter coating process. The filter was used in the fully cryogenic near-infrared camera CIRCE of the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) Telescope. The go…
Stray light calibration for the Solar Orbiter/Metis solar coronagraph
Romoli, M.; Andretta, V.; Uslenghi, M. +20 more
The Solar Orbiter/Metis visible and UV solar coronagraph redefines the concept of external occultation in solar coronagraphy. Classical externally occulted coronagraphs are characterized by an occulter in front of the telescope entrance aperture. Solar Orbiter will approach the Sun down to 0.28 AU: in order to reduce the thermal load, the Metis de…
Black coatings for combined stray light and thermal passive management for the challenging environmental conditions of Solar Orbiter
Castronuovo, Marco; Schillaci, Tiziano; Montemurro, Luca +4 more
In the context of ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 scientific program, Solar Orbiter (SolO) represents the first M-class mission, currently under implementation for a launch planned in October 2018.
One of the SolO solar remote-sensing instruments is the Multi Element Telescope for Imaging and Spectroscopy (METIS), under development by an Italia…
Metis/Solar Orbiter polarimetric visible light channel calibration
Romoli, M.; Andretta, V.; Uslenghi, M. +16 more
Metis is the solar coronagraph of the ESA mission Solar Orbiter. For the first time, Metis will acquire simultaneous images of the solar corona in linearly polarized, broadband visible light (580-640 nm) and in the narrow-band HI Ly-α line (121.6 nm). The visible light path includes a polarimeter, designed to observe and analyse the K-corona linea…