Watch：Oct.12 Dr. Roberto Susino: Investigations of the solar corona with the Solar Orbiter/Metis coronagraph
Speaker: Dr. Roberto Susino
Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF)
Oct.12, 2022
4:00 pm GMT +8
Metis is the coronagraph of the scientific payload of Solar Orbiter, the European Space Agency (ESA) mission launched in February 2020 and entirely dedicated to the investigation of the Sun and the heliosphere.
Metis is the result of an international collaboration led by the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) and funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), designed to specifically explore the regions of the solar atmosphere where the solar wind is accelerated and where Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and related transient phenomena originate. The characterisation and understanding of these phenomena of the solar activity are fundamental also because of their implications on the Space Weather.
The innovative optical design of Metis has been conceived to allow observations of the solar corona simultaneously in the visible light and in the ultraviolet (UV) around the neutral-hydrogen Lyman-α line. Images obtained with Metis allow the study, with a temporal and spatial resolution never achieved before, of the structures and dynamics of the full corona.
The characteristics of the Solar Orbiter mission, which will travel up to about 0.28 AU from the Sun and 30 degrees outside the ecliptic plane, will also make it possible to remotely observe the uncharted regions of the Sun, such as the solar poles and the internal heliosphere outside the ecliptic, and to better characterise the 3D structure of CMEs and solar eruptions.
About the speaker
Dr. Roberto Susino is staff researcher at the Astrophysical Observatory of Turin in the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). He received his M.Sc. in 2006 and Ph.D. in 2010 at the University of Catania (Italy). He has been working as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Observatory of Turin since 2014 in the solar physics group. His research activity focuses on the study of the dynamical phenomena of the solar corona, such as the solar wind, coronal mass ejections, shock waves, and erupting prominences, through the analysis of coronagraphic images and UV spectroscopic observations from several instruments of past and present solar missions (SOHO/LASCO and UVCS, STEREO/Secchi, Solar Orbiter/Metis). He is presently co-investigator of the Metis coronagraph for the Solar Orbiter ESA mission project.
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