Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Try the next-generation Data Catalog at catalog-beta.data.gov and help shape it with your feedback.

SOHO LASCO C2 Level 1.0 FITS Data

Metadata Updated: April 10, 2026

The LASCO C2 Calibrated FITS Data. \n\nLASCO (Large Angle Spectroscopic Coronagraph) is comprised of three nested coronagraphs (C1, C2, and C3) that image the solar corona from 1.1--30 solar radii (C1: 1.1--3; C2: 1.5--6; and C3: 3--30). The inner coronagraph (C1) is a newly developed mirror version of the classic Lyot coronagraph without an external occulter, while the middle coronagraph (C2) and the outer one (C3) are externally occulted. C1 is equipped with a Fabry-Perot interferometer that can take monochromatic images over the whole field of view with a spectral resolution of 0.07 nm. By stepping the bandpass across a spectral line, line profiles and Doppler shifts can be derived from all 1024 x 1024 pixels simultaneously. With an equivalent pixel size of 5.6 arcsec, the spatial resolution of C1 is ~11 arcsec. The resolution is ~23 arcsec for C2, and 112 arcsec for C3. The calculated expected precision of the emission line measurements, for example, of the 637.4 nm Fe X line is 0.05 Km/s at 1.1 solar radii, 1.0 km/s at 2 solar radii, and 8.0 km/s at 3 solar radii, all for a 60 s exposure. All three devices use a 1024 x 1024 pixel CCD. The CCDs are passively cooled to 193 K, but can be heated above ambient temperatures to drive off condensed material. The readout rate is ~21 s for a full image, but any line on the CCD can be accessed within about 60 ms, the unwanted lines being dumped. The electronics box provides overall control, including observation programs and scheduling. An observation program can be scheduled to be run at an absolute time or just next in sequence. It can run for a certain number of iterations, an interval of time, or stop at an absolute time. The observation program tasks included, e.g., taking single images from one of the telescopes, a series of images through the three linear polarizers, and a sequence of images at a series of Fabry-Perot wavelength steps. The image processing tasks are primarily image compression, with seven different techniques being available. On average, the readout time should be ~6 minutes or about 200 images/day. This information is from the paper ``The Large Angle Spectroscopic Coronagraph (LASCO): Visible Light Coronal Imaging and Spectroscopy,'' by G. E. Brueckner et al. (Proceedings of the First SOHO Workshop, ESA SP-348, pp. 27-34, November 1992).

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: See this page for license information.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date August 21, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 10, 2026

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date August 21, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 10, 2026
Publisher Solar Data Analysis Center (SDAC);SOHO Science Archive
Maintainer
Identifier https://doi.org/10.48322/h5kj-3939
Data Last Modified 2026-04-06
Category Heliophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id a9012ea0-07ec-4210-9a78-545a2546dcf0
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://doi.org/10.48322/h5kj-3939
License https://www.usa.gov/government-works
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash a8c868adff18a7911d4052fa9c6d6334070dff91d14c1bf5053a32e565e364e0
Source Schema Version 1.1

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.