BackForwardInstrument:  NFI 

Instrument details
Acronym NFI
Full name Narrow Field Imager Coronagraph
Purpose To observe the large dynamic range of the solar corona and inner heliosphere.
Short description The NFI is an externally occulted coronagraph with a similar field of view to SOHO/LASCO-C3: from 6 to 32 R☉. Polarisation is resolved with a filter wheel assembly. The image is digitised using a CCD camera with a 2k x 2k detector area It measures from 450 to 750 nm.
Background There is one NFI on the fourth PUNCH satellite which observes the sun together with 3 wide field imagers (WFI) on the 3 other satellites.
Scanning Technique Observes sun every 8 mins from all 3 WFI satellites. All four spacecraft are synchronized in-flight and the data are merged on the ground to provide a 3D image.
Resolution Angular resolution 2 arc-minutes
Coverage / Cycle Every 8 minutes, each PUNCH spacecraft acquires 7 images: 1 unpolarised and 6 polarised images in dual three-image sets.
Mass Power Data Rate 1.9 GBytes/day

 

Providing Agency NASA
Instrument Maturity Flown on an R&D satellite
Utilization Period: 2025 to 2028
Last update: 2022-02-07
Detailed characteristics
Satellites this instrument is flying on

Note: a red tag indicates satellites no longer operational, a green tag indicates operational satellites, a blue tag indicates future satellites

Instrument classification
  • Solar and space environment monitors
  • Solar activity monitor
WIGOS Subcomponents
  • Subcomponent 2
  • Solar coronagraph and heliospheric imagery both on the Earth-Sun line and off the Earth-Sun line (e.g. L5 point)
  • Solar coronographic imager [from L1, GEO, LEO]
Mission objectives
Primary mission objectives
  • Solar coronagraphic image
  • Solar wind velocity
Evaluation of Measurements

The following list indicates which measurements can typically be retrieved from this category of instrument. To see a full Gap Analysis by Variable, click on the respective variable.

Note: table can be sorted by clicking on the column headers
Note: * Primary mission objective.