First flight of the Gamma-Ray Imager/Polarimeter for Solar flares (GRIPS) instrument

The Gamma-Ray Imager/Polarimeter for Solar flares (GRIPS) is a balloon-borne telescope designed to study solar-flare particle acceleration and transport. We describe GRIPS's first Antarctic long-duration flight in Jan 2016 and report preliminary calibration and science results. Electron and ion...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Duncan, Nicole, Saint-Hilaire, P., Shih, A. Y., Hurford, G. J., Bain, H. M., Amman, M., Mochizuki, B. A., Hoberman, J., Olson, J., Maruca, B. A., Godbole, N. M., Smith, D. M., Sample, J., Kelley, N. A., Zoglauer, A., Caspi, A., Kaufmann, P., Boggs, S., Lin, R. P.
Format: Text
Language:unknown
Published: arXiv 2016
Subjects:
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics astro-ph.IM
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena astro-ph.HE
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics astro-ph.SR
Instrumentation and Detectors physics.ins-det
Space Physics physics.space-ph
FOS Physical sciences
Antarctic
Antarc*
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1609.08558
https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.08558
Description
Summary:The Gamma-Ray Imager/Polarimeter for Solar flares (GRIPS) is a balloon-borne telescope designed to study solar-flare particle acceleration and transport. We describe GRIPS's first Antarctic long-duration flight in Jan 2016 and report preliminary calibration and science results. Electron and ion dynamics, particle abundances and the ambient plasma conditions in solar flares can be understood by examining hard X-ray (HXR) and gamma-ray emission (20 keV to 10 MeV) with enhanced imaging, spectroscopy and polarimetry. GRIPS is specifically designed to answer questions including: What causes the spatial separation between energetic electrons producing HXRs and energetic ions producing gamma-ray lines? How anisotropic are the relativistic electrons, and why can they dominate in the corona? How do the compositions of accelerated and ambient material vary with space and time, and why? GRIPS's key technological improvements over the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) include 3D position-sensitive germanium detectors (3D-GeDs) and a single-grid, multi-pitch rotating modulator (MPRM) collimator. The 3D-GeDs have spectral FWHM resolution of a few hundred keV and spatial resolution $ : 17 pages, 15 figures; presented at SPIE 9905 (Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2016: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray) in Edinburgh, Scotland

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