• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.81.1-81.1
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• 2016

A total solar eclipse occurs on March 9 along the path through Indonesia and the Pacific. KASI organized an expedition team for total solar eclipse observation. The main purpose of this observation is to test the coronal temperature and outflow velocity diagnostics based on filter observation, which is proposed for the next generation coronagraph. In addition, various white light observations including automatic programmed observation, manual observation, linear polarization, and time-lapse movie will be tried. We report the preliminary result of the expedition.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.39.1-39.1
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• 2011

Coronal mass ejection (CME) plasmas have been observed in EUV and X-ray passbands as well as in white light. Mass of CME has been determined using polarized brightness observed by the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment (LASCO) on board Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Therefore, this mass obtained from the LASCO observation indicates the total CME mass. However, the mass of CME plasma in different temperatures can be determined in EUV and X-ray passbands using observations by SOHO/EIT, STEREO/EUVI, and Hinode/XRT. Prominence/CME plasmas have been observed as absorption or emission features in EUV and X-ray passbands. The absorption features provide a lower limit to cold mass. In addition, the emission features provide an upper limit to the mass of plasmas in temperature ranges of EUV and X-ray. We determine the mass constraints using the emission measure obtained by assuming the prominence/CME structures. This work will address the mass constraints of hot and cold plasmas in CMEs, comparing to total CME mass.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.57.1-57.1
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• 2019

NASA and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) have been collaborated to develop the Space solar coronagraph instrument to detect the solar wind speed and corona temperature. As an intermediate stage, BITSE is the Balloon-Borne instrument to prove our proposed technical method which uses a polarized light in 4 different bandwidth wavelengths. In the presentation, the optical design based on the requirements, tests and alignment process for integrating the system are discussed.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.58.1-58.1
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• 2019

We have developed Ground Software (GSW) of BITSE. The ground software includes mission operation software, data visualization software and data processing software. Mission operation software is implemented using COSMOS. COSMOS is a command and control system providing commanding, scripting and data visualization capabilities for embedded systems. Mission operation software send commands to flight software and control coronagraph. It displays every telemetry packets and provides realtime graphing of telemetry data. Data visualization software is used to display and analyze science image data in real time. It is graphical user interface (GUI) and has various functions such as directory listing, image display, and intensity profile. The data visualization software shows also image information which is FITS header, pixel resolution, and histogram. It helps users to confirm alignment and exposure time during the mission. Data processing software creates 4-channel polarization data from raw data.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.43.3-43.3
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• 2019

A coronal mass ejection (CME) mass is generally estimated by the total brightness measured from white-light coronagraph observations. The total brightness are determined from the integration of the Thomson scattering by free electrons of solar corona along the line of sight. It is difficult to estimate the masses of halo CMEs due to the projection effect. To solve this issue, we construct a synthetic halo CME with a power-law density distribution (ρ = ρ₀r^-3) based on a full ice-cream cone model using SOHO/LASCO C3 observations. Then we compute a conversion factor from observed CME mass to CME mass for each CME. The final CME mass is determined as their average value of several CME masses above 10 solar radii. Our preliminary analysis for six CMEs show that their CME mass are well determined within the mean absolute relative error in the range of 4 to 15 %.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.57.3-57.3
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• 2019

Space applications of the motion have been served with DC motors for decades. But their functionality with a gearbox and lubricants and their weights are always an issue for its application. A piezo-motor has an advantage on the direct driving with higher accuracy, smaller size, and no-EMI. We use the piezo-motor to rotate a filter wheel directly in a balloon-borne coronagraph launched on September 2019. The piezo-motor works well in a temperature range from -10 to 40 Celsius with high reliability and high positioning / tilt accuracy (~0.1degree) with a photo-encoder. We verify its functionality for 7 days. In this talk, we report the design, test processes of the filter wheel including its balloon flight result.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.69.2-69.2
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• 2020

Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) is developing a coronagraph to measure the coronal electron density, temperature, and speed utilizing spectral change of the K-corona around 400 nm. However, near UV light is more affected by atmospheric effect on the ground than visible light. For the total solar eclipse on July 2 2019, KASI organized an expedition team to test the possibility of the similar measurement scheme in the visible light. The observation site was in Las Flores, San Juan, Argentina. We built an imaging spectrograph using micro lenslet array and grism, named Coronal Integral Field Spectrograph (CorIFS). In addition, images of white light corona, wide field background, and all sky were taken with various camera settings. We present the preliminary results of the expedition.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.78.3-79
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• 2021

Coronal Diagnostic Experiment (CODEX) is a diagnostic coronagraph developed by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) to be deployed in 2023 on the International Space Station (ISS). It is designed to obtain simultaneous measurements of electron density, temperature, and velocity in the 2.5 - 10 solar radius range using multiple filters. The filters are mounted in two filter wheel assemblies (FWAs), which have five filter positions each. One position of each FWA is occupied by windows, and remaining eight positions are occupied by three bandpass filters for temperature, two bandpass filters for velocity, one Ca II H filter for F-corona, one broadband filter for fast imaging and density, and one neutral density (ND) filter for direct Sun viewing and safety.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.33-33
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• 2013

We are developing empirical space weather (solar flare, solar proton event, and geomagnetic storm) forecast models based on solar data. In this talk we will review our main results and recent progress. First, we have examined solar flare (R) occurrence probability depending on sunspot McIntosh classification, its area, and its area change. We find that sunspot area and its increase (a proxy of flux emergence) greatly enhance solar flare occurrence rates for several sunspot classes. Second, a solar proton event (S) forecast model depending on flare parameters (flare strength, duration, and longitude) as well as CME parameters (speed and angular width) has been developed. We find that solar proton event probability strongly depends on these parameters and CME speed is well correlated with solar proton flux for disk events. Third, we have developed an empirical storm (G) forecast model to predict probability and strength of a storm using halo CME - Dst storm data. For this we use storm probability maps depending on CME parameters such as speed, location, and earthward direction. We are also looking for geoeffective CME parameters such as cone model parameters and magnetic field orientation. We find that all superstorms (less than -200 nT) occurred in the western hemisphere with southward field orientations. We have a plan to set up a storm forecast method with a three-stage approach, which will make a prediction within four hours after the solar coronagraph data become available. We expect that this study will enable us to forecast the onset and strength of a geomagnetic storm a few days in advance using only CME parameters and the WSA-ENLIL model. Finally, we discuss several ongoing works for space weather applications.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.97-97
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• 2012

Hinode/XRT has observed coronal mass ejections (CMEs) since it launched on Sep. 2006. Observing programs of Hinode/XRT, called 'CME watch', perform several binned observations to obtain large FOV observations with long exposure time that allows the detection of faint CME plasmas in high temperatures. Using those observations, we determine the upper limit to the mass of hot CME plasma using emission measure by assuming the observed plasma structure. In some events, an associated prominence eruption and CME plasma were observed in EUV observations as absorption or emission features. The absorption feature provides the lower limit to the cold mass while the emission feature provides the upper limit to the mass of observed CME plasma in X-ray and EUV passbands. In addition, some events were observed by coronagraph observations (SOHO/LASCO, STEREO/COR1) that allow the determination of total CME mass. However, some events were not observed by the coronagraphs possibly because of low density of the CME plasma. We present the mass constraints of CME plasma and associated prominence as determined by emission and absorption in EUV and X-ray passbands, then compare this mass to the total CME mass as derived from coronagraphs.