NCAR/ESSL has approved funding for a new coronagraph to replace the aging Mk4 instrument. Keep track of this exciting development on our New Coronagraph page. The Mk4 is still offline while a new camera is being installed and tested. Thank you for your patience.

The PICS instrument is now serving images of the limb taken with a narrow-band H-alpha filter. The new data replaces the broad-band images in the MLSO data portal, and its first date of appearance was May 5th, 2009. The animation to the left shows narrow-band limb images of prominence activity occurring at approximately 21:08 UT on May 8th, 2009.

The High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research has built an archive of images of solar eclipses which are deemed to be of sufficient quality for research. The data begin from 1869, extend to the present day and are from a diverse range of sources, but have been converted to a standard format.

The High Altitude Observatory and the COSMO K-coronagraph project have funded a new solar dome at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesa Lab. The new dome is the same size (16.5 feet diameter) as the large dome at MLSO and will house the HAO solar-pointed spar, which is a duplicate of the MLSO spar. This new facility will be used to test and calibrate the COSMO K-coronagraph before it is deployed to MLSO in early 2013.

Coronal Multichannel Polarimeter (CoMP) data are now available from the MLSO data calendar. Expect the number of days with processed data to increase in the coming weeks, so check back often!

On June 5th, MLSO observed the last transit of Venus in our lifetimes! Visit our transit page to view movies taken during the event.

The Chromospheric and Prominence Magnetometer (ChroMag) prototype optics under test on a lab bench at HAO. Monochromatic green light is being passed through 88mm of calcite. This is the thickest stage in ChroMag. The fringes are used to test the alignment of the optical elements and the crystal axes. ChroMag is one of the planned suite of three instruments of HAO’s Coronal Magnetism Solar Observatory (COSMO), and will be used for solar physics research and space weather applications.