The Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) Mission

摘要

The primary scientific objective of RHESSI Small Explorer mission is to investigate the physics of particle acceleration and energy release in solar flares, through imaging and spectroscopy of X-ray/gamma-ray continuum and gamma-ray lines emitted by accelerated electrons and ions, respectively. RHESSI utilizes rotating modulator collimators together with cooled germanium detectors to image X-rays/gamma-rays from 3 keV to 17 MeV. It provides the first hard X-ray imaging spectroscopy, the first high resolution spectroscopy of solar gamma-ray lines, and the first imaging of solar gamma-ray lines and continuum. Here we briefly describe the mission and instrumentation, and illustrate its capabilities with solar and cosmic observations obtained in the first 17 months of operation.