The GOES Solar Ultraviolet Imager: Present Status and Unique Opportunities for the Future (Invited Presentation)

The Solar Ultraviolet Imagers (SUVI) on GOES-16 and GOES-17 provide the space weather forecasting and solar physics research communities with uninterrupted, ultra-low-latency observations of the solar atmosphere in six passbands: 94, 131, 171, 195, 284, and 304 Å. In addition to providing images of a wide variety of solar phenomena, SUVI’s relatively large field of view and ability to make high dynamic range observations without saturation or blooming provide unique opportunities to observe features of events like solar eruptions and flares that are inaccessible to other instruments. Moreover, a series of recent, experimental campaigns using off-pointed SUVI images have demonstrated the potential of observing the extended EUV corona for both space weather and solar physics research. In this talk we present an overview of the SUVI instrument and its data products, current and future prospects for research and new operational approaches with SUVI, and some lessons learned for next-generation space weather observatories and other planned or proposed instruments, particularly solar imagers on missions off the Earth-Sun-line.