Solar Magnetograms and Filtergrams

On January 10 - 27, 2000, an 80-cm F/1.5 Ritchey-Chretien solar telescope flew for18 days suspended from a balloon in the stratosphere above Antarctica. The goal of the flight was to acquire long time series of high-resolution solar images and vector magnetograms of the solar photosphere and chromosphere.

Such observations will help to advance our basic scientific understanding of solar activity, in particular, flares and coronal mass ejections. Flying well above the turbulent layers of the Earth's atmosphere, the telescope obtained unprecedented sharp and stable observations of small-scale solar features. During most of the flight, contact with the payload was sporadic and only instrument status could be telemetered down.