Bibcode
Rodriguez, P.; Kassim, N. E.; Weiler, K. W.; Kaiser, M. L.; Reiner, M. J.; MacDowall, R. A.; Jones, D. L.; Unwin, S. C.; Kuiper, T. B.; Gopalswamy, N.
Bibliographical reference
American Astronomical Society, 194th AAS Meeting, #76.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 31, p.956
Advertised on:
5
1999
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
Since the 1960s, ground-based radio astronomers have had the capability
to image solar radio emissions using aperture synthesis techniques.
These images show the two-dimensional time history of CME-driven shock
fronts, for example. However, ground-based observations are limited by
the terrestrial ionosphere to frequencies above about 15 MHz, which
corresponds to a maximum solar altitude of about one solar radius. To
probe the altitude range from one solar radius to one AU requires
space-based radio telescopes. Many space-based low-frequency radio
telescopes have flown over the past three decades, but they all suffered
from lack of angular resolution because they consisted of single
spacecraft carrying simple dipole antennas. Even with this limitation,
much progress has been made by utilizing spacecraft spin to deduce
source location and size, thereby permitting tracking of solar radio
sources between the sun and Earth. However, no structural detail is
available from this technique, only source centroids and approximate
angular size. To provide a greater level of structural detail, we need
to take the next logical step in low-frequency solar radio astronomy:
aperture synthesis from space. We believe this can be done with
currently-available hardware as a medium-class Explorer (MIDEX) mission.
This mission would consist of approximately 16 identical and quite
simple micro-spacecraft in a spherical array approximately 100 km in
diameter. The array should be situated relatively far from Earth (to
lessen terrestrial interference), such as at the distant retrograde
class of orbits at about one million kilometers from Earth. This array
will be capable of imaging not only solar transient events to
unprecedented altitudes, but also the quiet sun, the entire terrestrial
magnetosphere via scattering in the magnetosheath, and the low-frequency
cosmic background, the latter being a totally unexplored radio window.
This work is supported in part by ONR and NASA.