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J.A. Bookbinder, E.E. DeLuca, L. Golub (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)
Hot magnetized plasmas - typified by the solar corona - are ubiquitous throughout the universe. The physics governing the dynamics of such plasmas takes place on remarkably small spatial and temporal scales, while both the cause activity and the response occur on large spatial scales. Thus both high resolution and large fields of view are needed. Observations show that typical solar active region structures range in temperature from 0.5 to 10\,MK, and up to 40\,MK in flares, implying the need for broad temperature coverage.
The RAM mission is designed to meet the observational requirements of the next generation Solar observatory; we present an overview of the proposed ST-Probe class mission concept, instrument complement, and technology status.
We emphasize the capabilities and status of the instrument suite that is proposed: a set of imaging and spectroscopic instruments that will enable definitive studies of fundamental physical processes that govern not only the solar atmosphere but much of the plasma universe. The imaging instruments on RAM combine extremely high spatial resolution in the corona (~10\,km) with intermediate scale (~70\,km) large FOV observations at several complementary passbands/temperatures. The spectroscopic instruments offer high resolution (~70\,km spatial, ~5\,km/s velocity) imaging EUV spectroscopy and a photon counting imaging X-ray micro-calorimeter array offers (~700\,km, 2\,eV energy, ~10\,msec time) over a bandpass from 0.2 to >40\,keV.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: jbookbinder@cfa.harvard.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34
© 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.