A NASA worker in a clean room at the National Space Science Technology Center in Huntsville, Alabama, checks out the CLASP instrument prior to shipping to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for Sept. 3 launch. Credits: NASA/MSFC
Imagine trying to study a specific region of the sun, eg, from a vantage point some 93 M miles away, probing that area at a level of precision <0.1% – with <5 minutes to do the job. That’s what NASA’s CLASP instrument is for, a joint effort b/n US, Japan, Spain and France, that was flown Sept 3 to an altitude of 167 miles. CLASP is shorthand for the Chromospheric Lyman-Alpha Spectro-Polarimeter, a high-tech telescope that studies the sun for some 300 seconds.
During that time, CLASP will delivered the first-ever measurement of the magnetic field in the sun’s middle layers, the upper chromosphere and the transition region. How? By measuring the Hanle effect polarization of Lyman-Alpha in the solar chromosphere,” said Amy Winebarger, principal investigator for CLASP.
Workers at Marshall conduct vertical cooling testing on the CLASP instrument during integration of the instrument hardware. Credits: NASA/MSFC
She explained: “That’s is a very technical way of saying this instrument will attempt to measure a specific wavelength of ultraviolet light emitted by hydrogen ions in this solar region, and the polarization of this light can be correlated to the intensity and direction of the magnetic field. The polarization of this specific spectral line is extremely sensitive to magnetic fields, making CLASP more effective than previous measuring methods by a factor of 100.”
What’s so important about that magnetic field? “It plays a crucial role in dictating the structure of the sun’s atmosphere,” said NASA astrophysicist Jonathan Cirtain. “It also acts as a conduit for mass and energy to flow into the solar corona and solar wind — some of it heading toward us as powerful solar flares that can disrupt Earth satellites. It’s critical to understand the process by which the sun releases these bursts of energy.”
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/releases/2015/nasas-clasp-mission-set-to-gauge-upper-solar-chromospheres-magnetic-field.html
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