The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS)
Abstract
The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) small explorer spacecraft provides simultaneous spectra and images of the photosphere, chromosphere, transition region, and corona with 0.33-0.4 arcsec spatial resolution, 2 s temporal resolution and 1 km/s velocity resolution over a field-of-view of up to 175 arcsec x 175 arcsec. IRIS was launched into a Sun-synchronous orbit on 27 June 2013 using a Pegasus-XL rocket and consists of a 19-cm UV telescope that feeds a slit-based dual-bandpass imaging spectrograph. IRIS obtains spectra in passbands from 1332-1358, 1389-1407 and 2783-2834 Angstrom including bright spectral lines formed in the chromosphere (Mg II h 2803 Angstrom and Mg II k 2796 Angstrom) and transition region (C II 1334/1335 Angstrom and Si IV 1394/1403 Angstrom). Slit-jaw images in four different passbands (C II 1330, Si IV 1400, Mg II k 2796 and Mg II wing 2830 Angstrom) can be taken simultaneously with spectral rasters that sample regions up to 130 arcsec x 175 arcsec at a variety of spatial samplings (from 0.33 arcsec and up). IRIS is sensitive to emission from plasma at temperatures between 5000 K and 10 MK and will advance our understanding of the flow of mass and energy through an interface region, formed by the chromosphere and transition region, between the photosphere and corona. This highly structured and dynamic region not only acts as the conduit of all mass and energy feeding into the corona and solar wind, it also requires an order of magnitude more energy to heat than the corona and solar wind combined. The IRIS investigation includes a strong numerical modeling component based on advanced radiative-MHD codes to facilitate interpretation of observations of this complex region. Approximately eight Gbytes of data (after compression) are acquired by IRIS each day and made available for unrestricted use within a few days of the observation.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1401.2491,
title = {The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS)},
author = {B. De Pontieu and A. M. Title and J. Lemen and G. D. Kushner and D. J. Akin and B. Allard and T. Berger and P. Boerner and M. Cheung and C. Chou and J. F. Drake and D. W. Duncan and S. Freeland and G. F. Heyman and C. Hoffman and N. E. Hurlburt and R. W. Lindgren and D. Mathur and R. Rehse and D. Sabolish and R. Seguin and C. J. Schrijver and T. D. Tarbell and J. -P. Wuelser and C. J. Wolfson and C. Yanari and J. Mudge and N. Nguyen-Phuc and R. Timmons and R. van Bezooijen and I. Weingrod and R. Brookner and G. Butcher and B. Dougherty and J. Eder and V. Knagenhjelm and S. Larsen and D. Mansir and L. Phan and P. Boyle and P. N. Cheimets and E. E. DeLuca and L. Golub and R. Gates and E. Hertz and S. McKillop and S. Park and T. Perry and W. A. Podgorski and K. Reeves and S. Saar and P. Testa and H. Tian and M. Weber and C. Dunn and S. Eccles and S. A. Jaeggli and C. C Kankelborg and K. Mashburn and N. Pust and L. Springer and R. Carvalho and L. Kleint and J. Marmie and E. Mazmanian and T. M. D. Pereira and S. Sawyer and J. Strong and S. P. Worden and M. Carlsson and V. H. Hansteen and J. Leenaarts and M. Wiesmann and J. Aloise and K. -C. Chu and R. I. Bush and P. H. Scherrer and P. Brekke and J. Martinez-Sykora and B. W. Lites and S. W. McIntosh and H. Uitenbroek and T. J. Okamoto and M. A. Gummin and G. Auker and P. Jerram and P. Pool and N. Waltham},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.2491},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
53 pages, 15 figures