Development of Data Analysis Techniques to Provide Photometric Images for a Heliospheric Imager

摘要

The Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI) spacecraft has shown that it is feasible to image the changing global electron content of the heliosphere. With this contract UCSD helped provide unique software algorithms for processing the SMEI flight data that are capable of obtaining heliospheric images at high spatial and temporal resolution from an 840 km Earth orbit. The imaging enhancements devised involved several new and unique state-of-the-art and never before attempted principles for SMEI operation. These include techniques to allow a CCD camera to provide differential photometry of 0.1% over the sky and especially at 90 degrees from the Sun-Earth line. This unprecedented precision is required to image and model CMEs and other heliospheric structures as they move outward from the Sun and engulf Earth. With this contract we perfected the measurements required to register and normalize these images. Thus, with these analyses, the scientific capability of heliospheric imager systems have been validated and can be used to accurately track CMEs in three dimensions as well as assess their potential as a space weather forecast tool.