ASPIICS: an externally occulted coronagraph for PROBA-3: Design evolution

Abstract

PROBA-3 is a mission devoted to the in-orbit demonstration of precise formation flying techniques and technologies for future ESA missions. PROBA-3 will fly ASPIICS (Association de Satellites pour l'Imagerie et l'Interferométrie de la Couronne Solaire) as primary payload, which makes use of the formation flying technique to form a giant coronagraph capable of producing a nearly perfect eclipse allowing to observe the sun corona closer to the rim than ever before. The coronagraph is distributed over two satellites flying in formation (approx. 150m apart). The so called Coronagraph Satellite carries the camera and the so called Occulter Satellite carries the sun occulter disc. This paper is reviewing the design and evolution of the ASPIICS instrument as at the beginning of Phase C/D.

A Simple Radial Gradient Filter for Batch-Processing of Coronagraph Images

“…The application of the algorithm is not only limited to CMEs, but also to analyse the dynamics of streamers, blobs, current sheets/rays, etc... in this FOV, and long-term coronal studies (Lamy et al, 2020a,b). The recently launched Multi Element Telescope for Imaging and Spectroscopy (METIS) onboard Solar Orbiter (Müller et al, 2020), and future space-based missions including the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC: Raghavendra Prasad et al, 2017;Banerjee, Patel, and Pant, 2017) onboard Aditya-L1 (Seetha and Megala, 2017), and the Association of Spacecraft for Polarimetric and the Imaging Investigation of the Corona of the Sun (ASPIICS: Renotte et al, 2014) of the Project for Onboard Autonomy-3 (PROBA-3) will also observe the inner corona. The application of SiRGraF on their data will be helpful to bring out processes occurring in the inner corona thereby improving our understanding of the same.…”

Automated Detection of Accelerating Solar Eruptions Using Parabolic Hough Transform

“…It is worth noting that future solar missions, such as ADITYA-L1 (Seetha and Megala, 2017), PROBA-3 (Renotte et al, 2014), Solar orbiter (Müller et al, 2013), etc., will coronagraphs observing the inner corona and full disk UV imagers. This algorithm can be applied to these datasets, and will help add to improve our knowledge of CME evolution following and during their eruption.…”

Imaging and Spectral Observations of a Type-II Radio Burst Revealing the Section of the CME-Driven Shock That Accelerates Electrons

“…This height is below the existing space-based white-light coronagraphs used for analysis. It is worth mentioning that future space-based missions, including Aditya-L1 (Seetha and Megala, 2017;Raghavendra Prasad et al, 2017), PROBA-3 (Renotte et al, 2014), and Solar Orbiter (Müller et al, 2013), are equipped with coronagraphs capable of observing the inner corona, a region with limited observations from existing space-based instruments. These instruments will be helpful in studies similar to this work to identify the white-light counterparts of the radio imaging of the shock origin, thereby improving understanding of such phenomenon.…”