Next Generation Solar Coronagraph
‘Development of a Solar Coronagraph on ISS’ is the project of the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) to develop a coronagraph in collaboration with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and to install it on the International Space Station (ISS). The coronagraph is an externally occulted coronagraph with a field of view from 2.5 to 10 solar radii. The observation wavelength is approximately 400 nm. Photometric filter observations around this band enable the estimation of 2D electron temperature and electron velocity distribution in the corona. Together with a high time cadence (<1 min) of corona images used to determine the geometric and kinematic parameters, the coronagraph will yield the spatial distribution of electron density by measuring the polarized brightness. For the purpose of technical demonstration, we observe the total solar eclipse in August 2017 on the ground with a simple optics and filter system, DICE, and perform a stratospheric balloon experiment in 2019 with a fully equipped coronagraph, BITSE. The ISS coronagraph, CODEX, is planned to be installed in 2023 for addressing a number of questions (e.g., solar wind source and acceleration) that are both fundamental and practically important in the physics of the solar corona and of the heliosphere.