Launch of CLASP2.1. Credit of the photo: US Army, White Sands Missile Range.
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The international team of the “Chromospheric LAyer Spectro-Polarimeter” (CLASP) space missions, which includes three scientists of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has just received the NASA Group Achievement Honor Award for the successful execution of the recent CLASP2.1 mission. The goal of this mission is to map the magnetic field of the Sun in an extended region of the chromosphere.
The Chromospheric Layer Spectro-Polarimeter series of heliophysics sounding rocket missions were designed to measure the polarization of the ultraviolet light emitted by the Sun to study the magnetic fields in a complex region of the solar upper atmosphere known as the chromosphere. So far, three space experiments have been carried out: CLASP1 in 2015 for measuring the linear polarization of the hydrogen Lyman-alpha line at 1216 Angstroms; CLASP2 in 2019 for measuring the linear and circular polarization across the h and k lines produced by ionized magnesium atoms around 2800 Angstroms; and CLASP2.1 in 2021 for extending the CLASP2 measurements over a much larger field of view.
The most recent mission, CLASP2.1, was successfully launched on October 8, 2021 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico (USA), aboard a NASA Black Brant IX sounding rocket. The resulting measurements of spectroscopically resolved polarization that CLASP2.1 obtained during its five minutes of observing time yielded a first-of-its-kind map of magnetically induced polarization in the solar ultraviolet radiation. The results demonstrate that future space telescope missions will be able to routinely take this type of measurements in order to study the magnetic fields in such region of the Sun's atmosphere (the chromosphere) that is critical for quantifying the buildup of energy for solar flares and space weather.
CLASP2.1 is an international collaboration led by USA (Marshall Space Flight Center), Japan (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan), Spain (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias), and France (Institute d’Astrophysique Spatialle). The Spanish contribution comes from the POLMAG research group of the IAC, whose theoretical investigations represented the motivation for the CLASP missions. The IAC scientists that participate in the CLASP2.1 mission are Ernest Alsina Ballester, Tanausú del Pino Alemán and Javier Trujillo Bueno (who is one of the four PIs of CLASP).
POLMAG - Polarized Radiation Diagnostics for Exploring the Magnetism of the Outer Solar Atmosphere
POLMAG aims at a true breakthrough in the development and application of polarized radiation diagnostic methods for exploring the magnetic fields of the chromosphere, transition region and corona of the Sun.
In 2015 and 2019 an international team (USA, Japan and Europe) carried out two unprecedented suborbital space experiments called CLASP and CLASP2, which were motivated by theoretical investigations carried out at the IAC. After the success of such missions, the team has just launched CLASP2.1 from the NASA facility in White Sands Missile Range (New Mexico, USA). The aim is to map the solar magnetic field throughout the chromosphere of an active region. To this end, CLASP2.1 has successfully measured the intensity and polarization of the solar ultraviolet radiation emitted by magnesium and
Every day space telescopes provide spectacular images of the solar activity. However, their instruments are blind to its main driver: the magnetic field in the outer layers of the solar atmosphere, where the explosive events that occasionally affect the Earth occur. The extraordinary observations of the polarization of the Sun’s ultraviolet light achieved by the CLASP2 mission have made it possible to map the magnetic field throughout the entire solar atmosphere, from the photosphere until the base of the extremely hot corona. This investigation, published today in the journal Science
Four years ago, an international team (USA, Japan and Europe) carried out an unprecedented suborbital space experiment called CLASP-1, motivated by theoretical investigations carried out at the IAC by Javier Trujillo Bueno and his research group. After the outstanding success of that mission, a few days ago NASA has launched CLASP-2.
CLASP and CLASP2 are opening a new window for the investigation of magnetism in solar and stellar physics. In 2008 an international team of solar physicists started a novel project of space experiments. By means of telescopes and instruments launched on board of NASA suborbital rockets, unprecedented measurements of the polarization of the ultraviolet light emitted by the Sun in several atomic lines were performed. Such spectro-polarimetric observations are needed for obtaining information on the magnetic field in the enigmatic chromosphere-corona transition region of the solar atmosphere
Launched on a NASA sounding rocket, CLASP managed to measure for the first time the polarization of the solar ultraviolet Lyman-alphs radiation emitted by Hydrogen as it was moving 150 km above the Earth's surface on its parabolic trajectory.
Massive stars in metal-poor galaxies often have close partners, just like the massive stars in our metal-rich Milky Way. This has been discovered by an international scientific team in which research staff from the Instituto de Aastrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Universidad de La Laguna (ULL) participate. They used the European Very Large Telescope in Chile to monitor the velocity of massive stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud. The research is published in Nature Astronomy . For the past twenty years, astronomers have known that many massive stars in the metal-rich Milky Way have a
The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has been host to the Spanish ALMA Days 2025, which was held from 18th to 20th February in the IACTEC building in the Science and Technology Park at Las Mantecas (Tenerife). The aim of this event was to give information about the coming observation cycle of ALMA ( Atacama Large Millimetre/Submillimetre Array ) and to provide an overview of the data base of the telescope and its observing tools. In addition the scientific results of more than 10 years of observations were presented, and the future perspectives offered with the implementation of
The Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias hosted this week the global meeting of the members of the European project The Whole Sun , a project approved and funded by the European Research Council (ERC) as part of its Synergy Grant calls. The duration of the project is seven years (from 2019 to 2026) and its full title is: “The whole Sun: untangling the complex physical mechanisms behind our eruptive star and its twins”. The main objective of the ERC’s Synergy Grant calls is to promote the joint work of groups of researchers in different European institutions so that all the necessary tools
