Animations of the SOHO Spacecraft
SOHO Scientific Payload , MPEG 740K.
Deploying the Solar Panels , MPEG 400K.
SOHO Towards L1 , MPEG 1.2M
During 1994 EAG completed the fast-track fabrication, test and on-time delivery of 4 flight detectors for the SOHO SUMER and UVCS instruments to alleviate problems encountered with the MAMA-based detectors that were previously baselined for his NASA/ESA mission. These new detectors each have a 26 x 9mm format, with 25µm pixels (1024 x 360), KBr photocathodes and counting rate capacity of the order 400 kHz. The readout system is a cross delay line system similar to that developed in our technology development programs, coupled with a low resistance microchannel plate Z stack.
The SOHO observatory was succesfully launched by NASA in December 1995 and all instruments have been recording astrophysical data since April 1996. The SUMER spectrograph is examining the temperature, density and motion of regions of the solar atmosphere in the wavelength range 500 - 1600Å. SUMER is a collaboration between The Max Planck Institute - Lindau (Germany), NASA GSFC, and UCB. The UVCS spectrograph will examine the solar corona out to >5 solar radii in the wavelength range 500 - 1300Å. Determination of spectral line profiles and intensities is currently allowing investigations of coronal heating, solar wind acceleration and composition. UVCS is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (Harvard), NASA GSFC and UCB.
In May 1996, Dr. Siegmund and the EAG team was presented with the prestigous NASA GSFC Distinguished Group Achievement Award for work carried out in the the fabrication of the SOHO instrumentation.