MLSO News

News

2008-4-7

The home page of this MLSO website now features a new graphical element: Featured Event. This part of the second row of images in the home page shows an animation of an event of interest. By clicking on the animation (or the Show Movie link below the animation) you can see a higher resolution movie of the event. More information about the event is available from the More Information link.

2007-10-1

All Solar Maximum Mission (SMM) Coronagraph/Polarimeter (C/P) data are now available from the SMM C/P web site.

These same data are also available from the Mauna Loa web page, the Virtual Solar-Terrestrial Observatory, and the Virtual Solar Observatory.

The SMM Coronagraph obtained images of the corona in white light and halpha from March through September of 1980 before suffering an electronics failure that rendered it inoperative. The instrument was repaired by the Challenger Space Shuttle ( STS-41C ) in April 1984 and obtained images between June 1984 and November 1989 when it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. The SMM coronagraph obtained ~240,000 images of the corona during its operation. The SMM C/P recorded quadrants of the sun (north-east-south-west) in a square field-of-view extending around the entire corona between 1.6 and 4.1 solar radii and out to 6.0 solar radii along the diagonals (corresponding to the solar equator). Images were obtained at a spatial resolution of 12 arcseconds in the wideband 'green' filter (500 to 535 nm). Three polaroid filters were used for polarization analysis of the observed radiation. Between 1980 and December 1986, many of the orbital data sequences included images taken in the neutral line of hydrogen known as halpha (654.3 to 658.3 nm).

The SMM home page provides all SMM Coronagraph images in fits and jpeg formats, along with daily movies, synoptic maps, CME catalogues, calibration information and a few IDL tools for using the data.

This work was completed through NASA grant LWS03-0161-0051.