Speaker
Description
Metis is the coronagraph on-board Solar Orbiter, an ESA/NASA solar mission, launched in February 2020. At present, Solar Orbiter has completed the commissioning phase and it is in its cruise phase.
Metis is an externally occulted imaging coronagraph that provides imaging of the extended corona in ultraviolet and visible light. During these first phases, extensive observational campaigns have been carried out in order to characterize the response of the two Metis channels.
Amongst the different calibration and characterization activities already performed and planned for the future, an important role is played by stellar observations. Stars with known, stable fluxes are important to verify the radiometric response of the instrument over its field of view and monitor its evolution over time. Stars, being point-like sources, are also ideal to verify the spatial resolution of the instrument by gaining information on its point spread function (PSF).
In this work, we describe the first results obtained from the stellar calibration campaigns performed until April 2021.
