SMEI: design and development of an Earth-orbiting all-sky coronagraph

BV Jackson, PP Hick, A Buffington, RE Gold, George Simnett, Christopher Eyles, Mark Cooke, NR Waltham

Research output: Contribution to journalAbstract

Abstract

The Air Force/NASA Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI) launched January 6, 2003 is now recording whole sky data on each 100-minute orbit. Precise photometric sky maps of the heliosphere around Earth are expected from these data. The SMEI instrument extends the heritage of the HELIOS spacecraft photometer systems that have recorded CMEs and other heliospheric structures from close to the Sun into the anti-solar hemisphere. SMEI rotates once per orbit and views the sky away from Earth using CCD camera technology. To optimize the information derived from this and similar instruments, a tomographic technique has been developed for analyzing remote sensing observations of the heliosphere as observed in Thomson scattering. The technique provides 3-dimensional reconstructions of heliospheric density. The tomography program has been refined to analyze time-dependent phenomena such as evolving corotating heliospheric structures and more discrete events such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and this improved analysis is being applied to the SMEI data.
Original languageEnglish
JournalProceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Volume5171
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 4 Feb 2004
EventProc. SPIE -
Duration: 1 Jan 2004 → …

Bibliographical note

Proc. SPIE 5171, Telescopes and Instrumentation for Solar Astrophysics, ISBN:9780819450449

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