TOWARD NEXT GENERATION SOLAR CORONAGRAPH: DEVELOPMENT OF COMPACT DIAGNOSTIC CORONAGRAPH ON ISS

The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute plans to develop a coronagraph in collaboration with National Aeronautics and Space Administrative (NASA) and install it on the International Space Station (ISS). The coronagraph is an externally occulted one stage coronagraph with a field of view from 2.5 to 15 solar radii. The observation wavelength is approximately 400 nm where strong Fraunhofer absorption lines from the photosphere are scattered by coronal electrons. Photometric filter observation around this band enables the estimation of 2D electron temperature and electron velocity distribution in the corona. Together with the high time cadence (< 12 min) of corona images to determine the geometric and kinematic parameters of coronal mass ejections, the coronagraph will yield the spatial distribution of electron density by measuring the polarized brightness. For the purpose of technical demonstration, we intend to observe the total solar eclipse in 2017 August for the filter system and to perform a stratospheric balloon experiment in 2019 for the engineering model of the coronagraph. The coronagraph is planned to be installed on the ISS in 2021 for addressing a number of questions (e.g. coronal heating and solar wind acceleration) that are both fundamental and practically important in the physics of the solar corona and of the heliosphere.