NOTE: Until such time as GOES-19 becomes operational, currently planned for April 4th, the animations and data are to be considered “preliminary and non-operational.”
Imagery from the Compact Coronagraph (CCOR) instruments is used by the SWPC Forecast Office to characterize activity in the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere known as the corona. This includes monitoring data for transient events like coronal mass ejections (CMEs), as well as monitoring the impacts the corona has on the steady stream of plasma, referred to as the solar wind, emanating from the Sun. Ultimately, information derived from CCOR images will be used as inputs to the WSA-Enlil model to forecast the impacts of CMEs and the solar wind on Earth.
LASCO images have been used by the SWPC forecast office to characterize the solar corona heating and transient events, including CME's, and to see the effects of the corona on the solar wind. More recently, the LASCO images are vital to the WSA-Enlil model that became operational in October of 2011. WSA-Enlil has become an important tool for forecasting the impact of Coronal Mass Ejections and the effects of the Solar Wind on the Earth.
The Compact Coronagraph-1 (CCOR-1), will image the Sun in the visible wavelength range from 480nm to 730nm. In order to image the much fainter corona, the CCOR-1 instrument will use an occulting disk to block light originating from the much brighter photosphere of the Sun. As a result, the field of view for CCOR-1 will span from 3.7 solar radii out to 17 solar radii with a spatial resolution of ~50 arcseconds. CCOR-1 is one of several instruments mounted on the Sun-Pointing-Platform of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-U (GOES-U). The GOES-U satellite launched on June 25th. On July 7th, GOES-U reached geostationary orbit and was officially renamed GOES-19 where it is currently operating. More detailed information on the CCOR-1 instrument is available here (link is external).
The Large Angle and Spectrometric COronagraph (LASCO) instrument is one of 11 instruments included on the joint NASA/ESA SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft. SOHO was launched on 2 December 1995 at 0808 UT (0308 EST) from the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida. The LASCO instrument is a set of three coronagraphs that image the solar corona from 1.1 to 32 solar radii. It is convenient to measure distances in terms of solar radii. One solar radius is about 700,000 km, 420,000 miles or 16 arc minutes. A coronagraph is a telescope that is designed to block light coming from the solar disk, in order to see the extremely faint emission from the region around the sun, called the corona.
The CCOR-1 instrument is designed to replace the aging LASCO coronagraphs, C2 and C3, onboard the SOHO satellite which launched in December 1995. CCOR-1 is the world's first operational, space-based coronagraph dedicated to providing an image of the sun’s corona, the faint outermost layer of the solar atmosphere, every 15 minutes. CCOR-1 began observing the corona on September 19, 2024.
The LASCO coronographs are part of the SOHO suite of instruments that were launched in December of 1995. SWPC has made use of the coronograph images in their forecast office since they have been available, and more recently in the the WSA-Enlil modell.
CCOR-1 is a unique instrument being the first operational dedicated coronagraph to support space weather forecasting. It is also the first coronagraph to fly in geostationary orbit around Earth, and this leads to a number of unique features to its observations. Other coronagraphs have observed from the Lagrange-1 point, 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth in the direction of the Sun, well beyond the orbit of the Moon. Since CCOR-1 rides on the GOES-19 satellite, well within the Moon’s orbit, the Moon sometimes makes appearances in the field of view. The combined motion of GOES-19 and the Moon can make it seem to have curved or even looping paths. Another consequence of its proximity to Earth is sunlight that is reflected from the Earth’s natural albedo (e.g. clouds, snow, ice, oceans, etc.) can impact CCOR-1 observations. This reflected sunlight, called Earthshine, impacts CCOR-1 observations primarily during sunrise hours and the degree of the impact depends on the time of year. The effects are most pronounced around the equinoxes in March and September and gradually decay into the solstices. During periods around the equinoxes the Earth can block the sun from CCOR-1’s field of view and in difference images CCOR-1 is sensitive enough to show the nighttime city lights on the planet below. And of course, the CCOR-1 will show the usual moving objects in space, such as planets, comets, satellites, and maybe, once in a while, a tiny piece of space debris. There are also static or fixed artifacts, such as the dark “collar” around the base of the occulting disk that can be seen when the background is bright. Scientists are working to mitigate Earthshine.
CCOR-1 Data Products are availble here
- L1B FITS Data: These FITS files contain the CCOR-1 image data processed up to L1B and serve as the operational input for the CME Analysis Tool (CAT)
- JPEG Data: These JPEG files are created from the L3 CCOR-1 FITS data, which have been fully calibrated, background subtracted, and downsampled by a factor of 2
- MP4 Data: These MP4s are created from the JPEGs and contain data spanning three durations: the last 24 hours, the last 7 days, and the last 27 days