Published November 10, 2010 | Version v1
Journal article

SUNRISE: INSTRUMENT, MISSION, DATA, AND FIRST RESULTS

  • 1. Max-Planck-Institut fuer Sonnensystemforschung, Max-Planck-Str. 2, 37191 Katlenburg-Lindau (Germany)
  • 2. Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, C/Via Lactea s/n, 38200 La Laguna, Tenerife (Spain)
  • 3. Instituto de Astrofisica de AndalucIa (CSIC), Apdo. de Correos 3004, E-18080, Granada (Spain)
  • 4. Grupo de AstronomIa y Ciencias del Espacio, Universidad de Valencia, E-46980, Paterna, Valencia (Spain)
  • 5. High Altitude Observatory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, P.O. Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307-3000 (United States)
  • 6. Kiepenheuer-Institut fuer Sonnenphysik, Schoeneckstr. 6, 79104 Freiburg (Germany)
  • 7. Lockheed-Martin Solar and Astrophysical Lab., Palo Alto, CA 94304 (United States)

Description

The SUNRISE balloon-borne solar observatory consists of a 1 m aperture Gregory telescope, a UV filter imager, an imaging vector polarimeter, an image stabilization system, and further infrastructure. The first science flight of SUNRISE yielded high-quality data that revealed the structure, dynamics, and evolution of solar convection, oscillations, and magnetic fields at a resolution of around 100 km in the quiet Sun. After a brief description of instruments and data, the first qualitative results are presented. In contrast to earlier observations, we clearly see granulation at 214 nm. Images in Ca II H display narrow, short-lived dark intergranular lanes between the bright edges of granules. The very small-scale, mixed-polarity internetwork fields are found to be highly dynamic. A significant increase in detectable magnetic flux is found after phase-diversity-related reconstruction of polarization maps, indicating that the polarities are mixed right down to the spatial resolution limit and probably beyond.

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/2041-8205/723/2/L127

Additional details

Identifiers

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Astrophysical Journal Letters
Journal Volume
723
Journal Issue
2
Journal Page Range
p. L127-L133
ISSN
2041-8205