HR: 14:15h
AN: SH33A-02 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Seeing the Heliosphere with New Eyes: First Results from the SECCHI Experiment on STEREO
AU: * Vourlidas, A
EM: vourlidas@nrl.navy.mil
AF: Naval Research Laboratory, Code 7663, 4555 Overlook Ave, SW, Washington, DC 20375, United States
AB: The STEREO mission was launched on October, 2006 with the main objective to study Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) from their initiation in the solar corona to their arrival at Earth using a suite of remote sensing and in-situ instruments on two, almost identical, spacecraft. The mission objectives are mainly addressed by the imaging experiment, named Sun-Earth Connection Coronal & Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI), which comprises a suite of five telescopes; an EUVI full disk imager, two coronagraphs covering the range from 1.5 to 15 solar radii, and two heliospheric imagers observing along the Sun-Earth LINE from 15 solar radii to the Earth's orbit and beyond. It is the first time that such imaging capabilities are available and they will certainly lead to important advances in our understanding of the CME initiation, propagation, and its three-dimensional configuration. In this talk, we will showcase the observations and initial results from the first months of operations of the SECCHI telescopes. We will also discuss the instrument performance and synergies with existing observatories (e.g., SOHO). SECCHI was built by a consortium of US and European institutions under the direction of the Solar Physics Branch at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
UR: http:secchi.nrl.navy.mil
DE: 7509 Corona
DE: 7513 Coronal mass ejections (2101)
DE: 7594 Instruments and techniques
DE: 7974 Solar effects
SC: SPA-Solar and Heliospheric Physics [SH]
MN: 2007 Joint Assembly