Solar B - EIS

MULLARD SPACE SCIENCE LABORATORY

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

Author: L K Harra

EIS SCIENCE REQUIREMENTS

Document Number: MSSL/SLB-EIS/SP007.04 9 April 2001

Distribution:

NRL

G Doschek

 
 

C Korendyke

 
 

S Myers

 
 

C Brown

 
 

K Dere

 
 

J Mariska

 
     

NAOJ

H Hara

 
 

T Watanabe

 
     

RAL

J Lang

 
 

B Kent

 
     

BU

C Castelli

 
 

S Mahmoud

 
 

G Simnett

 

Mullard Space Science Laboratory

J L Culhane

 
 

A Smith

 
 

A James

.

 

L Harra

 
 

A McCalden

 
 

C McFee

 
 

R Chaudery

 
 

P Thomas

 
 

W Oliver

 
 

P Coker

 
 

R Gowen

 
 

K Al Janabi

 
 

M Whillock

 

SLB-EIS Project Office

A Dibbens

Orig

       

Author:

 

Date:

 
       

Authorised By

 

Date:

 
       

Distributed:

 

Date:

 

 

 

CHANGE RECORD

ISSUE

DATE

PAGES CHANGED

COMMENTS

01

30 May 2000

All new

Major revision and new reference number.

02

29 June 2000

5,6

Minor editorial changes in par 3.3 and in par 3.4c and 3.6

03

4 July 2000

4,5,6

Par 2.9, 6X6 changed to 4X4 armins. Par 3. If, less changed to greater. Par 3.2 a&e arcsec changed to pixels. Par 3.2g, deadline for decision added. Par 2.4, size of active region deleted. Par 3.6, table modified.

04

9 April 2001

4,5

3.1a define slot sizes. 3.2.e change from 1x512 pixels to 40x512 pixels 3.2.f define currently available exposure times. 3.2.g define AEC. 3.3.c define variables of a study

       
       
       
       
       

 

CONTENTS

3. Major Science Goals

4. Science Requirements

5. Instrument Design Requirements

I. Major Science Goals

Coronal Heating - to determine the physical mechanisms responsible for coronal heating in the quiet Sun and active regions (e.g. detect magnetic reconnection, wave heating).

Transient Phenomena - to determine the physical mechanisms responsible for transient phenomena, such as solar flares, coronal mass ejections, jets, network brightenings, in the solar atmosphere (e.g. determine energy transport and mass motions during transient events).

Energy Transfer from the photosphere to the corona - to investigate the causal relationship between dynamics in the photosphere and coronal phenomena (relate EIS observations to data obtained by the solar-B SOT and XRT).

 

 

II Science Requirements

  1. To perform EUV spectroscopy with high spectral resolution. EIS is required to determine Doppler velocities to an accuracy of ~ 3km/s from spectral line shifts and non-thermal motions as small as 20 km/s from line widths.
  2. To perform EUV spectroscopy with high spatial resolution. EIS is required to resolve structures equal to 2 arcsecs resolution.
  3. To perform monochromatic EUV imaging.
  4. To perform both the imaging and spectroscopy mode with high temporal resolution. In spectroscopy mode, EIS is required to obtain accurate measurements of strong line intensities and line widths in < 1s in highly dynamic events such as flares, and every 10 s in less dynamic phenomena such as active region loops. For imaging, EIS is required to obtain monochromatic images of an active region in ~ 3 s for dynamic events and 10 s for active region loops.
  5. To obtain imaging and spectral measurements from spectral lines in the transition region, corona and solar flares. This temperature range is from 0.1 MK - 20 MK, which requires observations in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV). The selected wavebands are 180-204 A and 250-280 A.
  6. To obtain accurate coronal density measurements. EIS is required to measure densities in coronal holes (~108 cm-3) and solar flares, which are the most dense phenomena in the solar atmosphere (~1012 cm-3).
  7. To respond to highly dynamic phenomena. EIS is required to obtain high temporal resolution observations of dynamic phenomena. Since intensities will change on orders of magnitude EIS is required to change the observing mode by responding to an external or internal event trigger.
  8. To locate and change the observing mode to a region of brighter intensity. EIS is required to be able to locate regions of higher intensity in an observation (e.g. a bright point) and relocate to observe a small field of view with a different observing sequence.
  9. To observe a range of sizes of solar phenomena. EIS is required to observe small transient network brightenings (on order of a few arcsecs2) and large active region (4X4arcmins2).

III Instrument Design Requirements

1) Pointing and Field of View

  1. To select a slit or slot as required. Four slit positions are available. Currently 3 positions have been determined - 1" for just sampling our spatial resolution, a 2" slit and a 40" slot for providing monochromatic imaging with no blending from the stronger lines. A further large slot >100" has been decided but it's final width has yet to be determined. It is limited in the current instrument design to be <250".
  2. To point EIS in the E-W direction with a coarse pointing in the range +/- 15' with an accuracy of +/- 3". The coarse pointing will be used to obtain approximate pointing of each target.
  3. To have fine pointing in the range 0-6'.
  4. EIS FOV is 360" X 512" (360" is the fine pointing range, and 512" is the maximum image height of the CCD).
  5. To have stability during an observation of 1" in 10 s (the average exposure time for the observation of an active region loop). The spacecraft 3s stability is 0.6" in 2 s, 1.1" in 20 s and 1.7" in 1 minute.
  6. To determine EIS pointing with a fine pointing accuracy of 0.5". It is required to point EIS with accuracy greater than the spatial resolution.

2) Readout Issues

  1. To expose and readout the maximum image area of both CCDs (2048x512 pixels) simultaneously.
  2. To allow any fraction of a CCD to be downloaded in the spatial direction (i.e. not the full slit length). This is to allow the observation of a smaller FOV.
  3. To allow fractions of a CCD to be downloaded in the spectral direction (i.e spectral windowing).
  4. To have a minimum of 1 spectral window and a maximum of 25 spectral windows
  5. To expose and process 40 X 512 pixels (e.g. readout time, compression) data in <1s. This is to allow the processing of one slot image (40"x512") or one spectral line with a width of 40 pixels and an image area of 1"x512" in <1s.
  6. To perform exposure times in the range 100 ms - few hundred s with an accuracy of 5 %. The ability to make shorter exposures down to 10 ms is desirable. The minimum exposure time is 50ms which can be stepped in increments of 10ms (TBC).
  7. To perform automatic exposure control. This will allow a decrease of the exposure time with an increasing line intensity.
  8. To perform data compression. The data compression is currently JPEG in the MDP, but the facility to include a different compression scheme in the ICU should remain open. It is required that the compression scheme or factor can be varied in different studies.

3) Mode of Observation

  1. Science operations shall be performed from ground command.
  2. The onboard software should be designed to aid code development and to facilitate the uplinking of new software.
  3. The study sequences shall consist of a number of variables (exposure time, number of spectral windows, spectral window width, slit/slot size, mirror step, compression scheme). The variables should not be constrained in any way i.e. the spectral window width can be different for each spectral line.
  4. The instrument shall also collect data based on a number of uplinked observing sequences.
  5. The parameters (e.g. slit size, y size, exposure time) of the observation shall be changed by command.

4) Event Trigger

  1. To respond or not to XRT's flare trigger by moving to the flare location and starting a new observation sequence. Only respond if the flare is within the EIS FOV.
  2. To generate an internal EIS solar event trigger. This should have the flexibility to change to a different study.
  3. To respond to the event trigger by moving to the event and starting a new study within 30 s.(This is TBC)

5) Instrument Health

  1. Have the ability to interrupt studies (abort or pause and restart).
  2. Monitor the health of the instrument and enter a safe mode if an anomaly is detected.
  3. The instrument must respond in an appropriate manner to spacecraft emergency.

 

 

6) Key Terms

Key Terms

Description

Line list

List of chosen spectral lines

Exposure

An exposure at one slit location

Raster

A series of exposures to build up an image

Study

A sequence of rasters

Observation

A study which can be repeated, pointing at the same object