The herschel/score visible and UV coronagraph

The Herschel (HElium Resonant Scattering in the Corona and HELiosphere) experiment, approved by NASA in 2003 within the Living With a Star program, to be fbwn on a sounding rocket, is designed to investigate the helium coronal abundance and the solar wind acceleration region by obtaining the fi rst simultaneous observations of the electron, proton and helium solar corona. The HERSCHEL payload consists of several instruments that image the solar corona in the EUV and in the visible from the disk to the extended corona. SCORE (Solar CORonograph Experiment) is a coronagraph that has the capability of imaging the solar corona from 1.4 to 3.5 solar radii in the EUV lines of Hi 121.6 nm and HeII 30.4 nm and in the visible broadband polarized brightness. The SCORE coronagraph consists of an externally occulted refecting telescope in off-axis gregorian confi guration with a novel design in the stray light rejection. The use of multilayer mirrors in normal incidence makes possible the observations in all three wavelength bands with the same telescope. HERSCHEL/SCORE aims also at testing in space the performances of this design and establishing a proof-of-principle for the Ultraviolet Coronagraph of Solar Orbiter.