Results of the September 26, 1994 Balloon Flight of the Solar Disk Sextant: Implications for the Variability of the Solar Diameter and Oblateness

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Session 44 -- Solar Observations and Theory
Display presentation, Tuesday, 10, 1995, 9:20am - 6:30pm

[44.07] Results of the September 26, 1994 Balloon Flight of the Solar Disk Sextant: Implications for the Variability of the Solar Diameter and Oblateness

S. Sofia (Yale/CSSR), W. Heaps (NASA/GSFC), L. Twigg (NASA/GSFC), T.J. Lydon (Yale/CSSR), U.J. Sofia (NASA/GSFC)

The Solar Disk Sextant (SDS) experiment was flown on a stratospheric balloon on September 26, 1994, from Fort Sumner, NM. It remained at float altitude for nearly eight hours, gathering approximately 150,000 measurements of the solar diameter at different, pre-programmed orientations. We present the results from that flight for the solar diameter and oblateness. This was the second flight employing an optically contacted objective wedge in order to ensure instrumental stability. We compare the current results with those of a previous flight in 1992 in order to derive the variability of the solar diameter and oblateness at the milli-arcsecond level.

This work was supported by grants from NSF and NASA.

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