Identification

Title

Coronal spectral diagnostics: The coronal solar magnetism observatory (COSMO)

Abstract

The Need: Understanding and predicting the major phenomena taking place in the solar corona, such as flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), the heating and evolution of the solar atmosphere, and the acceleration of the solar wind, are fundamental challenges to predict our own star. These challenges are related to the solar magnetism and to the physical properties of solar plasmas: meeting them requires two types of measurements: (A) Spectrally resolved, simultaneous observations of the entire corona in multiple spectral lines emitted by chromospheric to hot coronal plasmas at high spatial resolution and cadence for long periods of time; and (B) Coronal magnetic field measurements. The Problem: The current fleet of space instruments suffers from three main limitations: (A) EUV narrow-band imagers provide simultaneous 2D images of the corona, but lack adequate plasma diagnostic capabilities; (B) High-resolution EUV spectrometers have the required diagnostic potential, but their narrow field of view prevents a continuous and simultaneous coverage of the entire corona. (C) No current instrument can measure the global coronal magnetic field. The Solution: Visible to near-IR coronagraphs coupled to tunable filters combine the strengths of both EUV high resolution spectrometers and EUV imagers in one single instrument by 1) providing 2D images of the whole field of view at a single wavelength; 2) spectrally resolving individual lines near-simultaneously across the entire field of view, and 3) measuring the magnetic field through polarimetry. The proposed Coronal Solar Magnetism Observatory (COSMO) visible to near-IR coronagraph would allow the measurement of: (A) simultaneous plasma thermal structure of the whole solar corona and CMEs; (B) plasma velocity vector; and (C) coronal magnetic field. The technology behind visible/near-IR coronagraphs coupled to tunable filters is mature; ground-based implementation of such instruments would provide long-term, easily-upgradable data sets.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d770859f

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

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End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2022-11-24T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

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version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact