First observations from the SPICE EUV spectrometer on Solar Orbiter

Abstract

We present first science observations taken during the commissioning activities of the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument on the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission. SPICE is a high-resolution imaging spectrometer operating at extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths. In this paper we illustrate the possible types of observations to give prospective users a better understanding of the science capabilities of SPICE. The paper discusses the first observations of the Sun on different targets and presents an example of the full spectra from the quiet Sun, identifying over 40 spectral lines from neutral hydrogen and ions of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, neon, sulphur, magnesium, and iron. These lines cover the temperature range between 20,000 K and 1 million K (10MK in flares), providing slices of the Sun's atmosphere in narrow temperature intervals. We provide a list of count rates for the 23 brightest spectral lines. We show examples of raster images of the quiet Sun in several strong transition region lines, where we have found unusually bright, compact structures in the quiet Sun network, with extreme intensities up to 25 times greater than the average intensity across the image. The lifetimes of these structures can exceed 2.5 hours. We identify them as a transition region signature of coronal bright points and compare their areas and intensity enhancements. We also show the first above-limb measurements with SPICE above the polar limb in C III, O VI, and Ne VIII lines, and far off limb measurements in the equatorial plane in Mg IX, Ne VIII, and O VI lines. We discuss the potential to use abundance diagnostics methods to study the variability of the elemental composition that can be compared with in situ measurements to help confirm the magnetic connection between the spacecraft location and the Sun's surface, and locate the sources of the solar wind.

14 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A

References in corpus (4)

• The Solar Orbiter mission -- Science overview
• Hot Explosions in the Cool Atmosphere of the Sun
• Solar Coronal Loops Associated with Small-scale Mixed Polarity Surface Magnetic Fields
• Measuring relative abundances in the solar corona with optimised linear combinations of spectral lines

Cited by in corpus (11)

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• Spectroscopic evidence of cool plasma in quiet Sun HRIEUV small scale brightenings
• Observations of Fan-Spine Topology by Solar Orbiter/EUI: Rotational Motions and Indications of Alfvén Waves
• Plasma composition measurements in an active region from Solar Orbiter/SPICE and Hinode/EIS
• Slow Solar Wind Connection Science during Solar Orbiter's First Close Perihelion Passage
• SPICE Connection Mosaics to link the Sun's surface and the heliosphere
• A magnetic avalanche as the central engine powering a solar flare
• 3D structures of the base of small-scale recurrent jets revealed by Solar orbiter
• Active region upflows in various coronal structures and their coupling to the lower atmosphere
• A New Method of Deriving Doppler Velocities for Solar Orbiter SPICE