Preliminary Data from the Solar Optical Universal Polarimeter (SOUP) on Spacelab2

First, the film data was digitized into a 512 x 512 image array using a CCD camera system. Images were registered, or corrected to remove the effects of solar rotation. Dust and irregularities in the optics were corrected for by dividing out flat field images digitized with no film in the light path.

Corrections were also made for bad pixels and irregularities in the CCD by subtracting dark current images of the CCD (i.e., with no light passing through the system). Finally, the 512 x 512 array of integers was compressed into a 256 x 256 format by averaging groups of four pixels. Science results from investigations of the data include characteristics of the granulation of the solar photosphere, the observation of exploding granules, horizontal velocity fields and flow patterns, and characterization of the role of the solar 5-minute oscillations in the granulation pattern.

The three products held at NSSDC are identified as follows: 85-063A-08A SOUP White Light Images (5 tapes of processed image data) 85-063A-08B Fortran Source Code and IDL Source Code to Read SOUP Data (1 tape) 85-063A-08C 16mm Movie of a SOUP Raw Data Sample (1 reel)