The Instruments on SOHO

SOHO - the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory - is a spacecraft that carries 12 instruments each designed to look at different features of the Sun.

Helioseismology

There are 3 instruments that look at what goes on inside the Sun!
GOLF: Global Oscillations at Low Frequencies. Looks at the entire Sun at the same time and watches how it vibrates.
VIRGO: Variability of Solar Irradiance and Gravity Oscillations Measures how much power comes out of the Sun per square metre. What units would you measure this in? Also looks for the effect of gravity in the vibrations of the Sun.
SOI: Solar Oscillations Investigations This looks at the photosphere and sees how it wobbles. From this we find out what it's like inside the Sun and how it changes with the solar cycle.

If you want to know how we can look inside the Sun then explore the "Beneath the Solar Surface" adventure.

Solar Atmosphere. A total of 6 experiments are peering into the solar atmosphere to see what we can see and answer questions like...how fast is it? what is it made of? how hot is it? how did it get there? how did it get so hot? how long does it last....
CDS: Coronal Diagnostic Spectrometer Looks at the density, temperature and velocity of smaller pieces of the solar atmosphere (just a few times the size of the Earth!) from the chromosphere. through to the corona. all at the same time.
EIT: Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope Takes pictures of the entire Sun in 4 different wavelengths. One wavelength looks at the chromosphere, one at the Transition Region. and the remaining two look at two different temperatures in the corona.
LASCO: Large Angle Spectroscopic Coronagraph Looks at the whole corona of the Sun, from 1.1 sun Radii way up 30 Sun radii. There are three coronagraphs. in LASCO that look at different distances from the Sun's surface.
SUMER: Solar Ultraviolet Measurement of Emitted Radiation Concentrates on what goes on in the chromosphere and transition region. Looks for plasma flows of thousands of kilometres an hour!.
SWAN: Solar Wind Anisotropy Looks for differences in the amount of solar wind coming off different bits of the Sun. It can also hunt for comets going close to the Sun!
UVCS: Ultraviolet Coronal Spectrometer This instrument is trying to find out how the mass in the corona accelerates and turns into the solar wind.

Solar Wind. You can lick your finger and stick it up out in front of you if you want to know about the wind around you when you're on Earth. SOHO has three experiments that do more or less that, only with the solar wind instead!
CELIAS: Charge, Element, and Isotope Analysis System This instrument is finding out what the solar wind is made of.
COSTEP: Comprehensive Suprathermal and Energetic Particle Analyzer Not all the particles that come SOHO intercepts come from the Sun. Some appear to come from outside our solar system of even outside our galaxy! This instrument tells us what these particles are and how fast they are.
ERNE: Energetic and Relativistic Nuclei and Electron experiment Lots of different nuclei (the plural of nucleus. wind whenever there is solar flare. This experiment looks for these particles. This tells us about what causes these solar flare explosions.



Use the browser's BACK button to return to the previous page.