Extended UV corona imaging from the Solar Orbiter: the Ultraviolet and Visible-light Coronagraph (UVC)

In the context of the Solar Orbiter mission, the novel concept is presented here of an Ultraviolet and Visible-light Coronagraph (UVC) instrument for the imaging of the full extended corona in UV and visible-light. Specifically, the UVC experiment is designed to measure the Lyman-alpha line-emissions from neutral hydrogen (121.6 nm) and single-ionized helium (30.4 mn) in a field-of-view that from 0.2 A.U., is comprised between 1.3 to 3.5 solar radii R(D) from sun center. The same multilayer-coated telescope optics is used for the two UV Lyman-alpha lines and for the polarized brightness measurement of the visible-light K-corona. Each wavelength bandpass is selected by filters.