Design and performances of the heliospheric imager for the STEREO mission

Emmanuel Mazy; Jean-Philippe Halain; Jean-Marc Defise; Philippe Ronchain; Russell A. Howard; J. Daniel Moses; Chris Eyles; Richard Harrison

doi:10.1117/12.624823

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14 October 2005 Design and performances of the heliospheric imager for the STEREO mission

Emmanuel Mazy, Jean-Philippe Halain, Jean-Marc Defise, Philippe Ronchain, Russell A. Howard, J. Daniel Moses, Chris Eyles, Richard Harrison

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Proceedings Volume 5962, Optical Design and Engineering II; 59621P (2005) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.624823
Event: Optical Systems Design 2005, 2005, Jena, Germany

Abstract

The Heliospheric Imager (HI) is part of the SECCHI suite of instruments on-board the two STEREO spacecrafts to be launched in 2006. Located on two different orbits, the two HI instruments will provide stereographic images of solar coronal plasma and coronal mass ejections (CME) over a wide field of view (~90°), ranging from 13 to 330 solar radii (R₀). These observations complete the 15 R₀ field of view of the solar corona obtained with the other SECCHI instruments (2 coronagraphs and an EUV imager). The HI instrument is a combination of 2 refractive optical systems with 2 different multi-vanes baffle system. The key challenge of the instrument design is the rejection of the solar disk light, with total straylight attenuation of the order of 10^-13 to 10^-15. The optics and baffles have been specifically designed to reach the required rejection. This paper presents the SECCHI/HI opto-mechanical design, with the achieved performances. A test program has been run on one flight unit, including vacuum straylight verification test, thermo-optical performance test and co-alignment test. The results are presented and compared with the initial specifications.

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Emmanuel Mazy, Jean-Philippe Halain, Jean-Marc Defise, Philippe Ronchain, Russell A. Howard, J. Daniel Moses, Chris Eyles, and Richard Harrison "Design and performances of the heliospheric imager for the STEREO mission", Proc. SPIE 5962, Optical Design and Engineering II, 59621P (14 October 2005); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.624823

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