The NOAA Coronal Mass Ejection Imager for Space Weather Forecasting

NOAA is developing a solar coronagraph to obtain coronal mass ejection (CME) imagery suitable for the estimation of CME velocity and mass near the sun. The near sun CME velocity and mass estimates will be applied as transient inputs to the inner boundary of a 3-D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model describing the ambient heliospheric solar wind. The model output at earth will enable the National Weather Service's (NWS) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) to forecast CME related geomagnetic storm threat conditions with 1-4 day lead times.

The solar coronagraph, referred to as the Compact Coronagraph (CCOR), employs an innovative optical design and an active pixel sensor detector to yield a small envelope, low mass, low power, and low cost CME imager capable of operation on various small platforms such as the GOES-U Sun-Pointing Platform (SPP) and small satellites.

We describe the innovative aspects of the CCOR optical design, its performance, and the concept of operations.