Speaker
Description
NASA's Multi-slit Solar Explorer (MUSE) mission is a new kind of spectrometer, targeted at spectroscopy of the rapidly evolving phenomena driving heating and dynamics of the solar atmosphere. MUSE is led by the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab, with international science team involvement, including from the UK. Unlike previous space-based solar spectrometer designs in which a single slit rasters across a region of the solar surface at relatively low cadence, or executes sit-and-stare observations at significantly higher cadence, MUSE has an assembly of 35 slits each rastering across a narrow region of the Sun. This enables the coronal plasma to be measured across a field of view of 156" x 170", at 0.5" spatial scales, up to 100 times faster than previous instruments. MUSE's science goals are to determine which mechanism(s) heat the corona and drive the solar wind, to understand the origin en evolution of the unstable solar atmosphere, and to investigate fundamental plasma physics processes, and strong EUV spectral lines at 171, 284 and 108Å, plus context images at 193 and 304 A, span a range of temperatures have been selected to facilitate this. This talk will give an overview of the MUSE mission, and the kinds of science that it enables.
