A prototype photometer for terahertz solar flares observation in continuum

R. MARCON; P. KAUFMANN; L. O. T. FERNANDES; R. GODOY; A. MARUN; E. C. BORTOLUCCI; M. B. ZAKIA; J. A. DINIZ; A. S. KUDAKA

São Bernardo do Campo, SP

Workshop; VII Workshop on Semiconductors and Micro & Nano Technology - SEMINATEC 2012; 2012

A THz photometer system was developed to observe outside the terrestrial atmosphere on stratospheric balloons or satellites. The telescope was designed to observe the whole solar disk detecting small relative changes in input temperature caused by flares at localized positions. A prototype was assembled to demonstrate the new concept and the system performance A Golay cell detector is preceded by lowpass filters to suppress visible and near IR radiation, a band-pass filter, and a chopper. It can detect temperature variations smaller than 1 K for data sampled at a rate of 10/second, smoothed for intervals larger than 4 seconds. For a 76 mm aperture, this corresponds to small solar burst intensities at THz frequencies. A system with 3 and 7 THz photometers is being built for solar flare observations on board ofstratospheric balloon missions.