Speaker
Description
Solar Orbiter, a joint ESA/NASA mission, is to study the Sun and inner heliosphere in greater detail than ever before. Launched in February 2000, Solar Orbiter already completed its first orbit in reaching perihelion of 0.5 au from the Sun in June 2000.
Understanding the physical processes operating in Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) events is a major goal of the Solar Orbiter mission because of the importance of acceleration processes in solar system and astrophysical sites, and because of the potential impact of these events on space hardware. The Energetic Particle Detector (EPD) investigation on Solar Orbiter is a suite of four different sensors plus the instrument control unit to measure the energetic particles from slightly above solar wind energies to hundreds of MeV/nucleon. We report here data from Suprathermal Ion Spectrograph (SIS) sensor of the EPD that covers the energy range of 0.1 – 10 MeV/nucleon for H-Fe with high mass resolution during the first orbit. SIS observed several 3He-rich SEP events inside of 1 au. Even though these events were small, their spectral forms, 3He content, and association with type III bursts convincingly identifies them as 3He-rich SEP events with properties similar to those previously observed at 1 au.
