Abstract

Solar coronal magnetized plasmas exhibiting evidence of telescopic fine structure, as first observed by the Skylab ATM soft x-ray grazing incidence telescopes (~5") and the XUV slitless spectroheliographs (≥ 2"), resulted in a profound change in how theoreticians view the solar corona. To better unravel the physical implications of the Skylab data, it became obvious that not only was higher spatial resolution required but also higher temporal resolution. In addition, because the solar corona is causally coupled to the lower solar atmosphere, i.e., the photosphere, both electrodynamically and mechanically, monochromatic or at least narrowband images were required to map structure exhibited at one temperature to structure exhibited at other temperatures. These three requirements made it clear that Skylab type instruments could not obtain the desired data at reasonable cost. However, with the development of inexpensive normal incidence soft x-ray optics, sounding rocket experiments utilizing this new technology have demonstrated that normal incidence soft x-ray optics meet all the requirements noted above.

© 1991 Optical Society of America