A Sounding Rocket Experiment for Spectropolarimetric Observations with the Lyα Line at 121.6 nm (CLASP)

Ishikawa, R.; Bando, T.; Fujimura, D.; Hara, H.; Kano, R.; Kobiki, T.; Narukage, N.; Tsuneta, S.; Ueda, K.; Wantanabe, H.; Kobayashi, K.; Trujilo-Bueno, J.; Manso Sainz, R.; Stepan, J.; de Pontieu, B.; Carlsson, M.; Casini, R.
Bibliographical reference

Solar Polarization 6. Proceedings of a conference held in Maui, Hawaii, USA on May 30 to June 4, 2010. Edited by J. R. Kuhn, D. M. Harrington, H. Lin, S. V. Berdyugina, J. Trujillo-Bueno, S. L. Keil, and T. Rimmele. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2011., p.287

Advertised on:
4
2011
Number of authors
17
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
10
Refereed citations
6
Description
A team consisting of Japan, USA, Spain, and Norway is developing a high-throughput Chromospheric Lyman-Alpha SpectroPolarimeter (CLASP), which is proposed to fly with a NASA sounding rocket in 2014. CLASP will explore the magnetism of the upper solar chromosphere and transition region via the Hanle effect of the Lyα line for the first time. This experiment requires spectropolarimetric observations with high polarimetric sensitivity (˜0.1%) and wavelength resolution (0.1 Å). The final spatial resolution (slit width) is being discussed taking into account the required high signal-to-noise ratio. We have demonstrated the performance of the Lyα polarimeter by extensively using the Ultraviolet Synchrotron ORbital Radiation Facility (UVSOR) at the Institute for Molecular Sciences. In this contribution, we report these measurements at UVSOR together with the current status of the CLASP project.