EIT: Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Telescope for the SOHO mission

The Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) will provide wide-field images of the corona and transition region on the solar disc and up to 1.5 R above the solar limb. Its normal incidence multilayer-coated optics will select spectral emission lines from Fe IX (171 ), Fe XII (195 ), Fe XV (284 ), and He II (304 ) to provide sensitive temperature diagnostics in the range from 6 × 10⁴ K to 3 × 10⁶ K. The telescope has a 45 x 45 arcmin field of view and 2.6 arcsec pixels which will provide approximately 5-arcsec spatial resolution. The EIT will probe the coronal plasma on a global scale, as well as the underlying cooler and turbulent atmosphere, providing the basis for comparative analyses with observations from both the ground and other SOHO instruments. This paper presents details of the EIT instrumentation, its performance and operating modes.     

Reconstruction of the Sunspot Number Source Database and the 1947 Zurich Discontinuity

Solar Physics - The final version (V.19) of the total solar irradiance data from the SOlar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) Total Irradiance Monitor has been released. This version includes...     

Observations of the solar corona in polarized white light during the total solar eclipse of February 16, 1980: Preliminary results

Photographic observations of the corona were made by a Belgian expedition to Kenya during the eclipse of 1980, February 16, using a polaroïd filter oriented in three directions 60 ° apart. The preliminary results of the reduced data are presented here; these results consist in the analysis of the three following parameters: total intensity, degree of polarization, direction of the electric vector. The local variation of these parameters reveals, among other features, a deep coronal hole at the south pole and peculiar streamer (P.A. 280 °) associated to a transient, (the so-called tennis racket) also observed by other teams, and a density enhancement at P.A. 200 °, possibly associated with a transient observed with the K-coronameter of the High Altitude Observatory 12 hr before the eclipse.     

Eit and LASCO Observations of the Initiation of a Coronal Mass Ejection

We present the first observations of the initiation of a coronal mass ejection (CME) seen on the disk of the Sun. Observations with the EIT experiment on SOHO show that the CME began in a small volume and was initially associated with slow motions of prominence material and a small brightening at one end of the prominence. Shortly afterward, the prominence was accelerated to about 100 km s^-1 and was preceded by a bright loop-like structure, which surrounded an emission void, that traveled out into the corona at a velocity of 200–400 km s^-1. These three components, the prominence, the dark void, and the bright loops are typical of CMEs when seen at distance in the corona and here are shown to be present at the earliest stages of the CME. The event was later observed to traverse the LASCO coronagraphs fields of view from 1.1 to 30 R⊙. Of particular interest is the fact that this large-scale event, spanning as much as 70 deg in latitude, originated in a volume with dimensions of roughly 35" (2.5 x 10⁴ km). Further, a disturbance that propagated across the disk and a chain of activity near the limb may also be associated with this event as well as a considerable degree of activity near the west limb.     

Plans for a new radioheliograph in Belgium

The existence of spikes with very short time scales (1 to 10 ms) in the decimetric radio spectrum emphasizes the necessity of building radio instruments with very high time resolution. Therefore, we are planning to build a multi-frequency decimetric radioheliograph at the radioastronomical station of the Observatoire Royal de Belgique (Humain, Belgium). The existing array primarily devoted to observe at 408 MHz will constitute the starting structure of the project.Paper presented at the 4^th CESRA workshop in Ouranopolis (Greece) 1991