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D. M. Smith (University of California, Santa Cruz), RHESSI Team
The Sun, when flaring, is an extraordinarily powerful and efficient particle accelerator; on the order of half the released magnetic energy goes directly into the acceleration of electrons and ions, which can reach energies comparable to Galactic cosmic rays. The Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI), a NASA Small Explorer spacecraft in low Earth orbit, was designed to probe the acceleration process and its consequences through very-high-resolution imaging (down to 2.3 arcsec) and spectroscopy (\DeltaE/E as low as 0.2%). I will discuss the rotating modulation collimators and germanium detectors which give RHESSI these capabilities, and I will review recent RHESSI results on topics ranging from the smallest microflares to the largest flares of the decade, covering the behavior of both electrons and ions, and spanning photon energies from 3 keV to 10 MeV. RHESSI is supported by NASA contract NAS5-98033.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #3
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.