| Presentation Title: | CAPRI-SUN: High Cadence Low-energy Passband X-ray Detector with Integrated Full-sun Field of View |
| Author(s): | Sarah Pawlowski, Chris Entzel, Charles Kankelborg, Cole Arthur, Mila Kissinger,Reed Lando, Jackson Novak |
Abstract:
Solar flares are incredibly powerful events that release up to 10^32 ergs of energy. Numerous instruments in many wavelengths have studied solar flares, yet many unknowns remain about the spatial and temporal distribution of energy, the mechanisms of particle acceleration, and coronal plasma heating. CAPRI-SUN is a soft X-ray (SXR) radiometer designed and built by Montana State University (MSU) students, that takes measurements of SXR (1-8Å) flux released during a solar flare at an unprecedented cadence of 1kHz. Sub-second to centi-second fluctuations in microwave (Tan et al. 2010) and hard X-ray (Charikov et al. 2004) have been observed. We hypothesize that similar fluctuations may be observed in SXR, however there has yet to be an instrument with a rapid enough cadence for these fluctuations to be directly observed. The detection of these fluctuations is significant because they provide essential clues to determining the mechanisms driving coronal heating, energy transport, and particle acceleration.
CAPRI-SUN, the High Cadence Low-energy Passband X-ray Detector with Integrated Full-sun Field of View, flew as part of the High-Resolution Coronal Imager (HI-C) Flare campaign, a sounding rocket mission launched from Poker Flat Research Range on April,17, 2024 during an M1.6 solar flare. The event was a two-ribbon flare, starting at 21:55 UTC and lasting approximately 30 minutes. The observational window of the sounding rocket was nominally five minutes above the atmosphere.
The rocket was recovered, and CAPRI-SUN was returned to MSU. Our poster will focus on instrument design and preliminary data analysis results. As the first sounding rocket mission purposefully launched during a solar flare this campaign provides a unique opportunity and essential data for studying solar flares.