CLASP proposal selected by NASA

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Created on Wednesday, 05 December 2012 17:55

Last Updated on Thursday, 20 December 2012 13:55

The CLASP proposal has been selected for funding by NASA.

The Chromospheric Ly-alpha Spectropolarimeter (CLASP) is a sounding rocket experiment proposed by an international team
formed by USA, Japan and some European countries. Its goal is to measure the linear polarization of the hydrogen Ly-alpha line, produced by anisotropic optical pumping in the chromosphere-corona transition region of the Sun, and from this observable to try to constrain via the Hanle effect the strength and orientation of the magnetic field in the upper solar chromosphere. This exploratory and challenging measurement, with an observing time of only 5 minutes, will be attempted around December 2014 from a NASA sounding rocket equipped with a far-UV telescope, a spectrograph and a polarimeter. Some research groups of this COST action participate in this international project. For more information you may contact Javier Trujillo Bueno (IAC; Tenerife; Spain).