EGU21-4390
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4390
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

First results of the STIX hard X-ray telescope onboard Solar Orbiter

Andrea Francesco Battaglia1,2, Jonas Saqri3, Ewan Dickson1,3, Hualin Xiao1, Astrid Veronig3, Alexander Warmuth4, Marina Battaglia1, Säm Krucker1,5, and the STIX Team*
Andrea Francesco Battaglia et al.
  • 1University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Bahnhofstrasse 6, 5210 Windisch, Switzerland
  • 2ETH Zürich, Rämistrasse 101, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland
  • 3Institute of Physics, University of Graz, A-8010 Graz, Austria
  • 4Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), An der Sternwarte 16, D-14482 Potsdam, Germany
  • 5Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, 7 Gauss Way, 94720 Berkeley, USA
  • *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract

With the launch and commissioning of Solar Orbiter, the Spectrometer/Telescope for Imaging X-rays (STIX) is the latest hard X-ray telescope to study solar flares over a large range of flare sizes. STIX uses hard X-ray imaging spectroscopy in the range from 4 to 150 keV to diagnose the hottest temperature of solar flare plasma and the related nonthermal accelerated electrons. The unique orbit away from the Earth-Sun line in combination with the opportunity of joint observations with other Solar Orbiter instruments, STIX will provide new inputs into understanding the magnetic energy release and particle acceleration in solar flares. Commissioning observations showed that STIX is working as designed and therefore we report on the first solar microflare observations recorded on June 2020, when the spacecraft was at 0.52 AU from the Sun. STIX’s measurements are compared with Earth-orbiting observatories, such as GOES and SDO/AIA, for which we investigate and interpret the different temporal evolution. The detected early peak of the STIX profiles relative to GOES is due either by nonthermal X-ray emission of accelerated particles interacting with the dense chromosphere or the higher sensitivity of STIX toward hotter plasma.

STIX Team:

A. F. Battaglia, J. Saqri, E. C. M. Dickson, H. Xiao, A. M. Veronig, A. Warmuth, M. Battaglia, G. J. Hurford, S. A. Maloney, R. A. Schwartz, M. Kuhar, F. Schuller, L. Etesi, D. Ryan, L. Kleint, M. Piana, A. M. Massone, F. Benvenuto, P. Massa, E. Perracchione, J. Sylwester, M. Steślicki, T. Mrozek, A. Meuris, O. Limousin, N. Vilmer, F. Fárník, J. Kašparová, G. Mann, P. T. Gallagher, A. O. Benz & S. Krucker

How to cite: Battaglia, A. F., Saqri, J., Dickson, E., Xiao, H., Veronig, A., Warmuth, A., Battaglia, M., and Krucker, S. and the STIX Team: First results of the STIX hard X-ray telescope onboard Solar Orbiter, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-4390, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4390, 2021.

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