The ASO-S mission has three payloads, a Full-disk vector MagnetoGraph (FMG) to measure photospheric magnetic Fields, a Hard X-ray Imager (HXI) to observe non-thermal signals from 30 to 200 keV, and Lyman-alpha Solar Telescope (LST) to take images of the Sun in Lyman-alpha and white light. In this presentation, we focus in the LST payload including the introduction to its three instruments, the...
SOLAR-C is the next JAXA-led solar physics mission, scheduled to be launched in mid 2028. The main mission payload is EUVST (EUV High-Throughput Spectroscopic Telescope), an EUV imaging spectrometer with slit-jaw imaging system whose science goal is to understand how underlying physical processes, acting on small scales, lead to the formation of the outer solar atmosphere and the solar wind,...
The MUSE NASA mission, with significant ASI-INAF contribution, will use EUV spectroscopy in 3 single-line bands to probe basic magnetic and heating processes in the solar corona. The lines are sensitive to plasma emission at about 1, 2.5 and >8 MK and can therefore track the evolution of plasma when it is heated up and then cools down. Resolving the lines will allow to obtain information about...
Science data products are now available from the new Upgraded Coronal Multi-Channel Polarimeter (UCoMP) installed at the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory [ https://www2.hao.ucar.edu/mlso ]. UCoMP is a major upgrade of the CoMP instrument. Its expanded capabilities include: observations of multiple coronal emission lines over a wide range of coronal temperatures to explore the magneto-thermal...
In 2024, the coronagraphs ASPIICS and CODEX will be launched on the formation flying PROBA-3 ESA mission and on the ISS with a NASA-KASI-INAF mission, respectively.
The 150-m separation between the formation-flying Coronagraph and Occulter satellites of PROBA-3 will allow long-duration, eclipse-like imaging of the inner corona, down to heliocentric heights of 1.1 solar radii. Besides the...
The Full Sun Imager (FSI), as part of the Solar Orbiter/EUI suite of instruments, is a wide field channel of 3.8° x 3.8° FOV, imaging the corona in two bands: 17.4 (Fe IX-Fe X) and 30.4 nm (He II). A coronagraphic mode of observation was added late in the development of the instrument, to provide new insight into a region largely unexplored corona in these EUV bands. In fact, depending on the...
Solaris is a transformative Solar Polar mission concept to address crucial outstanding questions that can only be answered from a polar vantage. Solaris will image the Sun's poles from 75° latitude, providing new insight into the workings of the solar dynamo and the solar cycle, which are at the foundation of our understanding of space weather and space climate. Solaris will also provide...
Metis is the coronagraph on board Solar Orbiter. It provides images of the full corona in an annular FoV from 1.7 to 3 degrees, in the broadband linearly polarised light and in the narrowband UV hydrogen Lyman-alpha line. Metis is successfully operating both during the remote sensing windows and throughout the full orbit in a synoptic mode of acquisition. A summary of its performance are...
Up to a few months before the launch of Solar Orbiter, observation windows were planned to be scattered throughout the orbit and mostly concentrated during perihelia. Moreover, perihelia would have been probably dominated by high resolution instruments, with potential off-pointings not compatible with the Metis instrument. As the launch approached, the possibility arose of having a larger data...
Metis is the coronagraph of the scientific payload of Solar Orbiter, an ESA-NASA mission which aims to study the Sun poles and the circumsolar region. The activities necessary to operate Metis are implemented through the Metis Operations Facility (MOF). The MOF is the collection of functionalities and subsystems which allows to plan the instrument observation, validate the observation command...
At a general level, the goal of this talk is to outline possible computational approaches for the integration of data recorded by different Solar Orbiter instruments and for a multi-modal extraction information contained in these measurements. At a more technical level, this contribution will propose a possible AI-based pipeline for the identification of correlations between the signatures of...
The Solar Orbiter Metis coronagraph captures images of the solar corona in both visible (VL) and ultraviolet (UV) light. Tracks ascribable to the passage of galactic and solar particles appear in the Metis images. An algorithm implemented in the Metis processing electronics allows us
to separate the pixels fired by VL photons from those crossed by high-energy particles. The Metis particle...
The launch of Solar Orbiter allows us to study the solar corona at closer distances and from different perspectives, which helps us gain significant insights regarding the open question in solar physics concerning the origin of solar wind. In this work, we present an analysis of solar wind outflows from two locations: the S-web magnetic topology between two solar filaments, and the boundary of...
This study presents observations of a solar eruption captured by the Metis coronagraph on October 12, 2022. Utilizing total brightness data with normalized running differences, we measured the inclination of helicoidal structures, revealing a notable trend: as the polar angle increases, the inclination decreases.
Further analysis, including the examination of EUI images, reveals evidence of...
Parker Solar Probe (PSP; launched in 2018) and Solar Orbiter (SoLO; launched in 2020) observe the Sun from unprecedented close-in and out-of-ecliptic orbits. This unique and high-resolution data give us new insights about the initiation and early evolution of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) in the inner heliosphere. We investigate the morphology and propagation behavior of distinct small-scale...
The combination of the H I Ly$\alpha$ (121.6 nm) line formation mechanism with white-light and ultraviolet (UV) Ly$\alpha$ observations provides an effective method for determining the electron temperature of coronal mass ejections (CMEs). A key to ensuring the accuracy of this diagnostic technique is the precise calculation of theoretical Ly$\alpha$ intensities. This study performs a modelled...
Metis, the coronagraph on board Solar Orbiter (SolO), offers the unique capability to simultaneously track the evolution of coronal mass ejections and solar eruptions in the ultraviolet H I Ly-α line and polarized visible light. This comprehensive analysis allows for valuable insights into the dynamics, time evolution, mass contents, and outflow propagation velocity of plasma in the expanding...
Metis on board of Solar Orbiter is the space coronagraph developed by an Italian-German-Czech consortium. It is capable of observing solar corona and various coronal structures in the visible-light (VL) and UV (hydrogen Lyman $\alpha$) channels simultaneously for the first time. Here we present observations of a large eruptive prominence of April 25-26, 2021,
in the VL, taken during the...
On October 28, 2021 the first X-class solar flare of Solar Cycle 25 occurred in active region NOAA AR 12887 with a peak at 15:35 UT, producing the rare event of ground-level enhancement of the solar relativistic proton flux and a global extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wave, along with a fast halo coronal mass ejection (CME) as seen from Earth's perspective. A few hours before the flare, a slower CME...
A prominence eruption associated with a limb CME were observed on April 12, 2023 by the multi-channel Metis Coronagraph on-board the Solar Orbiter mission. The prominence, seen in the Metis UV Lyman-alpha images as a very bright and elongated arch propagating southward, is instead much weaker in Metis visible light (VL) images. The elongated arch splits into several blobs and becomes fainter...
A new research activity has been started which aims at a comprehensive study of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and their interplanetary counterpart, including the study of the CME driven shock and the associated energetic particles. This activity is going to use Solar Orbiter/Metis, SOHO/LASCO, and STEREO/COR1 and COR2 coronagraphic data for imaging CMEs in the corona; these observations will...
The Metis coronagraph simultaneously detects the integrated intensity of the hydrogen Lyman $\alpha$ line and the continuum intensity of the visible light, over the entire field of view. We focus on 2D non-LTE modeling of eruptive prominences or cores of CMEs up to eight solar radii, using a range of flow velocities to account for the Doppler dimming effect. We consider isothermal and isobaric...
The Metis instrument operating on board the Solar Orbiter provides simultaneous images in the Visible Light (VL) and Ultraviolet (UV) of the solar corona in the range of distances from about 2 up to over 10 solar radii with a spatial scale of 10 arcsec in VL and 20 arcsec in UV.
VL observations enable to determine the coronal electron density, then the Doppler Dimming diagnostics, combining...
The Metis coronagraph observes the solar corona at spatial resolution that can rival or surpass other instruments, either ground-based or space-borne. In addition, the instrument design allows observations at high temporal cadences that were difficult to achieve before in the extended corona.
During the perihelia of the Solar Orbiter nominal mission, these capabilities have been exploited to...
High resolution and high cadence coronagraphic images from Metis are helping addressing outstanding scientific questions on the structure an propagation of CMEs.
At the same time, these observations are opening up new opportunities to observationally constrain existing models and to develop a new generation of advanced, complex models that combine lower and outer coronal domains.
In this...
On November 09-11 2021 the Metis coronagraph on-board ESA Solar Orbiter mission observed a sequence of interesting transient events in the solar corona. First, starting from 18:00 UT on November 09 the instrument observed over the West limb the reconfiguration phases immediately after a major Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), also observed by the LASCO coronagraphs on-board SOHO. The VL images show...
One of the most important objectives of solar physics is the physical understanding of the solar atmospheric structure (still a matter of debate in the literature), including a full description in terms of the density (n) and temperature (T) distributions.
In our analysis we aim to constrain the n and T distributions through observations in the centimetric radio domain. We employ single-dish...
We present the comparison of the coronal visible light (VL) images obtained with the currently operating coronagraphs, such as Metis/Solar Orbiter, LASCO-C2/SOHO and COR2/STEREO-A. We compared the total (B) and polarized (pB) brightness data that was collected during various conjunctions and oppositions of these instruments in 2020-2023. Analyzing the latitudinal profiles of pB and B...
Throughout the initial three years of the operative mission, METIS coronagraph carried out numerous scientific observations, including some focused on comets. Among the observed cometary targets, there are periodic comets, like 2P/Encke, sunskirters, such as 96P/Machholz, some sungrazers, and even a long-period comet, the C/2021 A1 (Leonard), having an orbital period of approximately 80,000...
Comet C/2011 N3 (SOHO) and Comet C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) are, up to the present, the only two comets observed to have transited inside the inner solar corona at distances below two solar radii. The observations captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in EUV with the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly have revealed the comet tails structured as a sequence of striations, apparently distributed...
We have analyzed combined coronal observations acquired by Metis and the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on Solar Orbiter, to infer typical physical parameters of the streamer belt, fundamental to better characterize the physical structure and properties of the slow solar-wind sources and to constrain global coronal models.
This work aims to derive a set of physical parameters of streamers...
The analysis of the variability of the streamer belt and coronal magnetic field topology is one of the key questions listed among the scientific objectives of the Metis coronagraph, on board the Solar Orbiter spacecraft. To address this science question, we selected a set of polarised visible-light data (VL-pB) that Metis acquired in the first two years of the Nominal Mission Phase (i.e., from...
Metis is the coronagraph on-board Solar Orbiter; it comprehends two channels: the ultraviolet H I (121.6 nm) and visible light (580-640 nm). With a specific focus on the latter spectral range, radiometric capabilities were assessed on-ground using a flat-field panel for uniform illumination. We examined stability in-flight by analysing the light reflected from the instrument door.
When...
Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are one of the main drivers of the most severe Space Weather disturbances. It is often assumed that CMEs evolve self-similarly during their propagation in interplanetary space. However, shape distortions have been reported in both simulations and observations. Multi-viewpoint studies of these complex and distorted events are fundamental to test Space Weather...
On 2021 September 28, a C1.6 class flare occurred in active region NOAA 12871, located approximately at 27° S and 51° W on the solar disk.
This event was followed by a partial halo coronal mass ejection (CME) that caused the deflection of pre-existing coronal streamer structures, as observed in visible-light coronagraphic images.
An associated type II radio burst was also detected by both...
One of the main goals of Metis is the reconstruction of the coronal electron density via the analysis of polarisation induced by scattering on electrons. Orbiting the Sun, Metis also records the light of stars and planets behind the corona. We investigate the possibility to complement the aforementioned analysis by estimating the electron density on the bases of the stellar light traveling...
