SPICE, Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment

The SPICE instrument is a high-resolution slit-scanning imaging spectrometer operating at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths from 70.4 nm to 79.0 nm and 97.3 nm to 104.9 nm. It is a facility instrument on the Solar Orbiter mission, funded by ESA member states and ESA. SPICE provides diagnostics of the temperature, density and chemical composition of the solar plasma from the chromosphere to the corona. The spatial resolution of about 6 arcseconds and the spectral resolution is of the order of 0.07 nm. SPICE can raster a maximum field of view of 14x16 arcminutes. Three 11' long narrow slits (2”, 4", 6"), plus a long 14'x30’’ wide slit are available. SPICE produces three types of data: full spectra (full detector images), sit and stare observations (fixed slit), and scanned observations (the slit scanning the field of view). In scanned observations, up to 8 windows of 32 spectral pixels wide can be included. All Solar Orbiter SPICE data are available from the public Solar Orbiter data archive at http://soar.esac.esa.int/