SH43B-2454
Second flight of the Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager sounding rocket [FOXSI-2]
Thursday, 17 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Juan Camilo Buitrago-Casas1, Sam Krucker2, Steven Christe3, Lindsay Glesener2, Shin-nosuke Ishikawa4, Brian Ramsey5 and Natalie D. Foster6, (1)Space Sciences Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, United States, (2)University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (3)NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (4)National Astronomical Observatory, Mitaka, Japan, (5)NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, United States, (6)University of Florida, Astronomy, Gainesville, FL, United States
Abstract:
The Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager (FOXSI) is a sounding rocket experiment that has flown twice to test a direct focusing method for measuring solar hard X-rays (HXRs). These HXRs are associated with particle acceleration mechanisms at work in powering solar flares and aid us in investigating the role of nanoflares in heating the solar corona. FOXSI-1 successfully flew for the first time on November 2, 2012. After some upgrades including the addition of extra mirrors to two optics modules and the inclusion of new fine-pitch CdTe strip detectors, in addition to the Si detectors from FOXSI-1, the FOXSI-2 payload flew successfully again on December 11, 2014. During the second flight four targets on the Sun were observed, including at least three active regions, two microflares, and ~1 minute of quiet Sun observation. This work is focused in giving an overview of the FOXSI rocket program and a detailed description of the upgrades for the second flight. In addition, we show images and spectra investigating the presence of no thermal emission for each of the flaring targets that we observed during the second flight.
