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The Solar Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) Onboard Intelligence for Flare Observations

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A Correction to this article was published on 12 March 2024

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Abstract

Aditya-L1 is India’s first observatory-class solar space mission to study the Sun from the Lagrange L1 point. The Solar Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) is one of the payloads onboard Aditya-L1. SUIT is an off-axis Ritchey–Chrétien (RC) telescope, which images the Sun onto a 4k×4k CCD covering a field-of-view of 1.5 R⊙ with a plate scale of \(0.7''\) pixel−1. One of the primary objectives of SUIT is to study the early evolution of solar flares with high temporal cadence in the near-UV wavelengths (200 – 400 nm). The SUIT onboard intelligence was developed to achieve this objective. The complete intelligence algorithm is divided into several sub-modules, each working on a specific aspect of intelligence. These are: the HEL1OS flare-trigger module: generates flare trigger using HEL1OS hard X-ray data, the flare-localization module: locates the flare on the SUIT full-disc images, the Region of Interest (RoI) tracking module: accounts for the shift in RoI coordinates caused by rotation of the Sun, auto-exposure control module: adjusts the exposure time depending upon the flare intensity for better contrast. In this article, these onboard-intelligence modules are explained in detail. The working principles of these modules are tested using available data from various existing missions and also using synthetic data, and the obtained results are presented. The modules are implemented in hardware using an Actel RTAX 2000S FPGA and are tested using a laboratory setup. From the testing, it is found that flares are successfully localized in a mean time of 40 seconds from the GOES soft X-ray catalog start time. Also, a temporal cadence of under three seconds for a single-filter flare RoI image is achieved.

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The data underlying this article are provided in the article where ever possible. Other data if required will be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding author.

Change history

  • 01 March 2024

    The original online version of this paper has been updated to correct a spelling mistake in the name of author “Sreejith Padinhatteeri” which was previously written with one e in the last name and the affiliation “Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal 576104, India” where the word “Sciences” was spelled “Science”

  • 12 March 2024

    A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-024-02277-z

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for providing the Aditya-L1 mission opportunity and funding for the development of the SUIT payload. We acknowledge support of National Geophysical Data Center, Boulder, Colorado, USA for providing the data of GOES SXR flares via ftp server. We thank NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams for providing the data. We also acknowledge IRIS, which is a NASA small explorer mission developed and operated by LMSAL, with mission operations executed at NASA Ames Research center and major contributions to downlink communications funded by ESA and the Norwegian Space Centre.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Astrophysics, 2nd block, Koramangala, Bengaluru, 560034, India

    Manoj Varma, Anamparambu Ramaprakash, K. Sankarasubramanian & Krishnappa Nagaraju

  2. Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, 576104, India

    Sreejith Padinhatteeri

  3. Inter University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Post Bag 4, Ganeshkhind, Pune, 411007, India

    Sreejith Padinhatteeri, Sakya Sinha, Mahesh Burse, Anamparambu Ramaprakash, Durgesh Tripathi, Rushikesh Deogaonkar & Amrita Unnikrishnan

  4. UR Rao Satellite Center, Indian Space Research Organization, Bengaluru, 560017, India

    Anurag Tyagi, Reena Yadav, Ghanshyam Kumar, K. Sankarasubramanian, Koushal Vadodariya, Srikar Tadepalli, Manjunath Olekar & Mohamed Azaruddin

  5. Center of Excellence in Space Sciences India, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata, 741246, India

    Anamparambu Ramaprakash, Durgesh Tripathi & K. Sankarasubramanian

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  1. Manoj Varma
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Contributions

Manoj Varma, Sreejith Padinhatteri, Anamparambu Ramaprakash, Durgesh Tripathi, K. Sankarasubramanian, K. Nagaraju, Amrita Unnikrishnan worked on algorithm development and the test plan. Manoj Varma, Sakya Sinha, Anurag Tyagi, Mahesh Burse, Reena Yadav, and Ghanshyam Kumar worked on hardware laboratory setup and testing. Koushal Vadodariya, Rushikesh Deogaonkar, Manjunath Olekar, Mohamed Azaruddin helped with laboratory test setup and equipment. Srikar Tadepalli gave the simulated HEL1OS data range and noise values which is used for testing the HEL1OS flare-trigger algorithm. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Manoj Varma.

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The original online version of this paper has been updated to correct a spelling mistake in the name of author “Sreejith Padinhatteeri” which was previously written with one e in the last name and the affiliation “Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal 576104, India” where the word “Sciences” was spelled “Science”

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Varma, M., Padinhatteeri, S., Sinha, S. et al. The Solar Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) Onboard Intelligence for Flare Observations. Sol Phys 298, 16 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-023-02108-7

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