High-resolution white light observations of the solar corona over a large field of view (FOV) are crucial for understanding the structure and evolution of large coronal structures, including coronal mass ejections. With current telescopes for imaging the corona and inner heliosphere, there is a tradeoff between spatial resolution and the FOV; coronagraphs typically provide high-resolution (<1 arcminute) imaging over a relatively small region while heliospheric imagers are designed with a wide FOV, sacrificing spatial resolution for coverage. Incorporating a scanning system enables the conservation of high spatial resolution while adding the ability to map over a large field of regard; however, with conventional optical designs, this would require large/complex gimbaled systems, which are risky for space-based instrumentation. The Coronal and Heliospheric imaging with Achromatic Metasurfaces Pathfinder (CHAMP) aims to address this need, consisting of a visible light telescope which uses novel achromatic metasurface Risley prisms (MRPs) to create high-resolution, wide-FOV maps of the solar corona in a small form factor. With this design, optical beam steering is achieved by rotating two MRPs relative to each other using rotational stages, eliminating the need for gimbaled systems. Here we describe the CHAMP instrument concept and efforts to develop multi-layer achromatic MRPs which perform across a wide bandpass (∼100 nm) in the visible light regime.
White light observations of the solar corona are crucial for understanding large-scale coronal structures and examining the evolution of solar transients, such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which have important space weather impacts. We seek to develop technology for producing high-resolution, wide-FOV maps of the white light corona with reduced instrument size and complexity. With conventional optical designs, scanning the corona with a small instantaneous FOV or accommodating a telescope on a spinning or non-solar centered spacecraft would require large/complex gimbaled systems. To avoid these complex systems, conventional heliospheric imagers are designed with a wide FOV, sacrificing spatial resolution and throughput for coverage. To address this need, we have designed a visible light telescope which uses novel achromatic metasurface Risley prisms (MRPs) to create high-resolution, wide-FOV maps of the solar corona in a small form factor: the Coronal and Heliospheric imaging with Achromatic Metasurfaces Pathfinder (CHAMP). MRPs enable rapid mapping of a large FOV with a small instantaneous FOV, and features of interest (e.g., CMEs, comets, etc.) can be tracked using optimized scanning patterns. Here we present the preliminary concept and optical design for CHAMP.
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