Bibcode
Alvarez-Herrero, A.; Martínez-Pillet, V.; Del Toro Iniesta, J. C.; Domingo, V.
Bibliographical reference
API'09 - First NanoCharM Workshop on Advanced Polarimetric Instrumentation, Palaiseau, France, Edited by E. Garcia-Caurel; A. de Martino; EPJ Web of Conferences, Volume 5, id.05002
Advertised on:
6
2010
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
On June 8th 2009 the SUNRISE mission was successfully launched. This
mission consisted of a 1m aperture solar telescope on board of a
stratospheric balloon within the Long Duration Balloon NASA program. The
flight followed the foreseen circumpolar trajectory over the Artic and
the duration was 5 days and 17 hours. One of the two postfocal
instruments onboard was IMaX, the Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment. This
instrument is a solar magnetograph which is a diffraction limited imager
capable to resolve 100 km on the solar surface, and simultaneously a
high sensitivity polarimeter (<10-3) and a high resolution
spectrograph (bandwidth <70mÅ). The magnetic vectorial map can
be extracted thanks to the well-know Zeeman effect, which takes place in
the solar atoms, allowing to relate polarization and spectral
measurements to magnetic fields. The technological challenge of the IMaX
development has a special relevance due to the utilization of innovative
technologies in the Aeroespacial field and it is an important precedent
for future space missions such as Solar Orbiter from ESA. Among these
novel technologies the utilization of Liquid Crystal Variable Retarders
(LCVRs) as polarization modulators and a LiNbO3 etalon as
tunable spectral filter are remarkable. Currently the data obtained is
being analyzed and the preliminary results show unprecedented
information about the solar dynamics.