PROBA2: a Micro-Satellite Observing the Sun

Abstract:

PROBA2 (http://proba2.oma.be) is an ESA micro-satellite that was launched in November 2009. It carries two solar-observing instruments: SWAP, an EUV imager observing the one-million-degree corona, and LYRA, a UV-EUV radiometer acquiring time-series in four broadband channels. The characteristics of both instruments make them highly complementary to bigger missions such as SDO for the observation of solar eruptions and flares.

SWAP benefits from a large field-of-view and flexible off-pointing capabilities that allow the instrument to fill part of the observational gap between imagers and coronographs and to shed a new light on eruptive events (see e.g. West and Seaton, 2015; Kumar and Cho, 2014; Byrne et al., 2014)

LYRA acquires at a very fast cadence (20 Hz nominally) and with a high signal-to-noise ratio, and can therefore be used for the detailed analysis of the short-timescale variations of solar irradiance, such as the so-called quasi-periodic pulsations appearing in flares that could be intrinsically related to the nature of the flaring process (see e.g. Dolla et al., 2012).

The two instruments provide data suitable for the detection of space weather related events such as flares, CMEs, dimmings, EUV waves, etc. Automated tools (e.g. SOFAST, see Bonte et al. 2012) are already operational and are used daily in the frame of space weather services such as the ESA's Space Weather Coordination Centre (SSCC). These tools should be soon enriched with new capabilities.