SNO+ is a large liquid scintillator-based experiment located 2 km underground at SNOLAB, Sudbury, Canada. It reuses the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory detector, consisting of a 12 m diameter acrylic vessel which will be filled with about 780 tonnes of ultra-pure liquid scintillator. Designed as a multipurpose neutrino experiment, the primary goal of SNO+ is a search for the neutrinoless double-beta decay (0νββ) of130Te. In Phase I, the detector will be loaded with 0.3% natural tellurium, corresponding to nearly 800 kg of130Te, with an expected effective Majorana neutrino mass sensitivity in the region of 55–133 meV, just above the inverted mass hierarchy. Recently, the possibility of deploying up to ten times more natural tellurium has been investigated, which would enable SNO+ to achieve sensitivity deep into the parameter space for the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy in the future. Additionally, SNO+ aims to measure reactor antineutrino oscillations, low energy solar neutrinos, and geoneutrinos, to be sensitive to supernova neutrinos, and to search for exotic physics. A first phase with the detector filled with water will begin soon, with the scintillator phase expected to start after a few months of water data taking. The0νββPhase I is foreseen for 2017.

Aims. The Spectrometer Telescope for Imaging X-rays (STIX) on Solar Orbiter is a hard X-ray imaging spectrometer, which covers the energy range from 4 to 150 keV. STIX observes hard X-ray bremsstrahlung emissions from solar flares and therefore provides diagnostics of the hottest (⪆10 MK) flare plasma while quantifying the location, spectrum, and energy content of flare-accelerated nonthermal electrons. Methods. To accomplish this, STIX applies an indirect bigrid Fourier imaging technique using a set of tungsten grids (at pitches from 0.038 to 1 mm) in front of 32 coarsely pixelated CdTe detectors to provide information on angular scales from 7 to 180 arcsec with 1 keV energy resolution (at 6 keV). The imaging concept of STIX has intrinsically low telemetry and it is therefore well-suited to the limited resources available to the Solar Orbiter payload. To further reduce the downlinked data volume, STIX data are binned on board into 32 selectable energy bins and dynamically-adjusted time bins with a typical duration of 1 s during flares. Results. Through hard X-ray diagnostics, STIX provides critical information for understanding the acceleration of electrons at the Sun and their transport into interplanetary space and for determining the magnetic connection of Solar Orbiter back to the Sun. In this way, STIX serves to link Solar Orbiter’s remote and in-situ measurements.

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