The PROBA2 team is planning a special observation campaign in collaboration with the Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe teams next week. During this campaign the PROBA2 spacecraft will be off-pointed most of the time with its EUV imager SWAP taking solar images in which the solar disk will be shifted to the edge, as for example in the image on the left that was taken during another special campaign in 2017.
The (beginning of the) movie below shows the current orbits of the Solar Orbiter (black), Parker Solar Probe (purple), Stereo-A (green) and Bepi Colombo (yellow) spacecraft. The blue circle indicates Earth, around which PROBA2 orbits.
In the coming week, Parker Solar Probe will approach the Sun closely (reaching a perihelion in its orbit) and Solar Orbiter will observe the other side of the Sun (compared to PROBA2 and Parker Solar Probe). This interesting constellation sparked the idea for a joint observation campaign by these three missions. As contribution to this campaign, SWAP will be taking off-pointed observations from January 10 to January 20th. We will shift the solar disk to the edge of the image, with the goal to observe a larger part of the extended solar corona. We are hoping to observe a solar eruption with multiple instruments and spacecrafts, ideally following it farther out in the corona than usual.
From January 10 to January 15, PROBA2 will focus on joint observations with Parker Solar Probe and off-point to the solar east (left). From January 16 onwards, the spacecraft will turn to the solar west (right) to allow SWAP and the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager on Solar Orbiter to image the off-limb corona from opposite sides. Now we just have to hope for solar activity during this campaign..
The PROBA2 team is planning a special observation campaign in collaboration with the Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe teams next week. During this campaign the PROBA2 spacecraft will be off-pointed most of the time with its EUV imager SWAP taking solar images in which the solar disk will be shifted to the edge, as for example in the image on the left that was taken during another special campaign in 2017.
