An Operating Software Development of A Prototype Coronagraph for The Total Solar Eclipse in 2017

  • Published : 2017.10.10

Abstract

We develop a coronagraph to measure the coronal electron density, temperature, and speed by observing the linearly polarized brightness of solar corona with 4 different wavelengths. Through the total solar eclipse on 21 August 2017, we test an operating software of a prototype coronagraph working with two sub-systems of two motorized filter wheels and a CCD camera that are controlled by a portable embedded computer. A Core Flight System (CFS) is a reusable software framework and set of reusable software applications which take advantage of a rich heritage of successful space mission of NASA. We use the CFS software framework to develop the operating software that can control the two sub-systems asynchronously in an observation scenario and communicate with a remote computer about commands, housekeeping data through Ethernet. The software works successfully and obtains about 160 images of 12 filter sets (4 bandpass filters and 3 polarization angles) during the total phase of the total solar eclipse. For the future, we can improve the software reliability by testing the software with a sufficient number of test cases using a testing framework COSMOS. The software will be integrated into the coronagraph for balloon-borne experiments in 2019.

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