Issue |
A&A
Volume 675, July 2023
Solar Orbiter First Results (Nominal Mission Phase)
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|
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Article Number | A110 | |
Number of page(s) | 19 | |
Section | The Sun and the Heliosphere | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202245586 | |
Published online | 07 July 2023 |
First perihelion of EUI on the Solar Orbiter mission
1
Solar-Terrestrial Centre of Excellence – SIDC, Royal Observatory of Belgium, Ringlaan -3- Av. Circulaire, 1180 Brussels, Belgium
e-mail: david.berghmans@oma.be
2
Department of Mathematics, Physics and Electrical Engineering, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK
3
Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, Bât. 121, 91405 Orsay, France
4
Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 3, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
5
Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos, World Radiation Center, 7260 Davos Dorf, Switzerland
6
ETH Zürich, Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics, Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 27, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland
7
European Space Agency, ESTEC, Keplerlaan 1, PO Box 299, 2200 AG Noordwijk, The Netherlands
8
UCL-Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Holmbury St. Mary, Dorking, Surrey RH5 6NT, UK
9
Southwest Research Institute, 1050 Walnut Street, Suite 300, Boulder, CO 80302, USA
10
Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow State University, 119992 Moscow, Russia
11
Sorbonne Université, Observatoire de Paris – PSL, École Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, CNRS, Laboratoire de physique des plasmas (LPP), 4 place Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France
12
Rosseland Centre for Solar Physics, University of Oslo, PO Box 1029, Blindern, 0315 Oslo, Norway
13
Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut d’Optique Graduate School, Université Paris-Saclay, 91127 Palaiseau Cedex, France
14
Centre Spatial de Liège, Université de Liège, Av. du Pré-Aily B29, 4031 Angleur, Belgium
15
AESTER INCOGNITO, 75008 Paris, France
16
LATMOS, CNRS – UVSQ – Sorbonne Université, 78280 Guyancourt, France
17
Centre for mathematical Plasma Astrophysics, KU Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
18
Institute of Physics, University of Maria Curie-Skłodowska, Pl. M. Curie-Skłodowskiej 5, 20-031 Lublin, Poland
Received:
30
November
2022
Accepted:
2
March
2023
Context. The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on board Solar Orbiter consists of three telescopes: the two High Resolution Imagers, in EUV (HRIEUV) and in Lyman-α (HRILya), and the Full Sun Imager (FSI). Solar Orbiter/EUI started its Nominal Mission Phase on 2021 November 27.
Aims. Our aim is to present the EUI images from the largest scales in the extended corona off-limb down to the smallest features at the base of the corona and chromosphere. EUI is therefore a key instrument for the connection science that is at the heart of the Solar Orbiter mission science goals.
Methods. The highest resolution on the Sun is achieved when Solar Orbiter passes through the perihelion part of its orbit. On 2022 March 26, Solar Orbiter reached, for the first time, a distance to the Sun close to 0.3 au. No other coronal EUV imager has been this close to the Sun.
Results. We review the EUI data sets obtained during the period 2022 March–April, when Solar Orbiter quickly moved from alignment with the Earth (2022 March 6), to perihelion (2022 March 26), to quadrature with the Earth (2022 March 29). We highlight the first observational results in these unique data sets and we report on the in-flight instrument performance.
Conclusions. EUI has obtained the highest resolution images ever of the solar corona in the quiet Sun and polar coronal holes. Several active regions were imaged at unprecedented cadences and sequence durations. We identify in this paper a broad range of features that require deeper studies. Both FSI and HRIEUV operated at design specifications, but HRILya suffered from performance issues near perihelion. We conclude by emphasizing the EUI open data policy and encouraging further detailed analysis of the events highlighted in this paper.
Key words: Sun: corona / Sun: chromosphere / Sun: coronal mass ejections (CMEs) / instrumentation: high angular resolution / Sun: filaments / prominences / Sun: flares
© The Authors 2023
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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