261001.UV-CoronaSpectroscopyPastPresent&Future
Solar magnetic field artistic impression.
Leonard Strachan
Abstract
The use of an ultraviolet spectrometer behind an externally-occulted solar coronagraph was introduced in the late 1970’s by John Kohl, then at the Harvard College Observatory.
The idea came about after the discovery by Gabriel et al. of the bright H Ly-alpha line observed in the off-limb corona during a sounding rocket flight into the shadow of a solar eclipse.
This work eventually lead to the Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer (UVCS) on the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliophysics Observatory (SOHO) satellite.
SOHO/UVCS observations produced many significant results about the extended corona (R > 1.5 solar radii), including the role of wave-particle heating and acceleration in the solar corona, location of sources of the fast and slow solar wind, and detection of magnetic current sheets in coronal mass ejections.
Despite the resurgent interest in these and similar topics, particularly in turbulence heating, there has not been a successor spectroscopic instrument to UVCS.
This talk will discuss some of the key challenges to building future spectroscopic instrumentation to answer the still unresolved questions about coronal heating and solar wind acceleration.