The Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment (IMaX) for the Sunrise Balloon-Borne Solar Observatory

• DOI: 10.1007/s11207-010-9644-y
• Publication Date: 2010-11-16T12:21:06Z
• Authors: V. Martínez Pillet; J. C. del Toro In...; A. Álvarez-Herrero; V. Domingo; J. A. Bonet; L. González Ferná...; A. López Jiménez; C. Pastor; J. L. Gasent Blesa; P. Mellado; J. Piqueras; B. Aparicio; M. Balaguer; E. Ballesteros; T. Belenguer; L. R. Bellot Rubio; T. Berkefeld; M. Collados; W. Deutsch; A. Feller; F. Girela; B. Grauf; R. L. Heredero; M. Herranz; J. M. Jerónimo; H. Laguna; R. Meller; M. Menéndez; R. Morales; D. Orozco Suárez; G. Ramos; M. Reina; J. L. Ramos; P. Rodríguez; A. Sánchez; N. Uribe-Patarroyo; P. Barthol; A. Gandorfer; M. Knoelker; W. Schmidt; S. K. Solanki; S. Vargas Domínguez
• Keywords: Sunrise; Polarimeter; Solar observatory; Spectral resolution

The Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment (IMaX) is a spectropolarimeter built by four institutions in Spain that flew on board the Sunrise balloon-borne telesocope June 2009 for almost six days over Arctic Circle. As polarimeter IMaX uses fast polarization modulation (based use of two liquid crystal retarders), real-time image accumulation, and dual beam polarimetry to reach sensitivities 0.1%. spectrograph, instrument LiNbO3 etalon double pass narrow band pre-filter achieve spectral resolution 85 mAA. high Zeeman sensitive line Fe I at 5250.2 AA observes all Stokes parameters various points inside line. This allows vector magnetograms, Dopplergrams, intensity frames be produced that, after reconstruction, spatial resolutions 0.15-0.18 arcsec range 50x50 FOV. Time cadences vary between ten 33 seconds, although shortest one only includes longitudinal polarimetry. sampled ways depending applied observing mode, from just 11 them. All modes include extra wavelength point nearby continuum. Gauss equivalent are fields 80 transverse per sample. LOS velocities estimated with statistical errors order 5-40 m/s. design, calibration integration phases instrument, together implemented data reduction scheme described some detail.