Preliminary Data from the Solar Optical Universal Polarimeter (SOUP) on Spacelab2

The Solar Optical Universal Polarimeter (SOUP) experiment was flown in
July and August, 1985, on board the STS-51F/Spacelab II shuttle
mission. Images of solar features observed in white light were
recorded on film. The targets were solar pores, sunspots, upwellings,
active region AR 4682, and the structures along the solar limb. When
the film was returned to the investigator team and developed, it was
digitized frame by frame. Three preliminary data products were
deposited at NSSDC: five tapes of processed data files, one tape of
source program codes for reading the data files, and one 16mm movie of
a segment of SOUP data (an example of the raw data taken in flight).

The film frames were digitized using the following process. First,
the film data was digitized into a 512 x 512 image array using a CCD
camera system. Images were registered, or corrected to remove the
effects of solar rotation. Dust and irregularities in the optics were
corrected for by dividing out flat field images digitized with no film
in the light path. Corrections were also made for bad pixels and
irregularities in the CCD by subtracting dark current images of the
CCD (i.e., with no light passing through the system). Finally, the
512 x 512 array of integers was compressed into a 256 x 256 format by
averaging groups of four pixels.

Science results from investigations of the data include
characteristics of the granulation of the solar photosphere, the
observation of exploding granules, horizontal velocity fields and flow
patterns, and characterization of the role of the solar 5-minute
oscillations in the granulation pattern.

The three products held at NSSDC are identified as follows:

85-063A-08A SOUP White Light Images (5 tapes of processed image data)
85-063A-08B Fortran Source Code and IDL Source Code to Read SOUP Data
(1 tape)
85-063A-08C 16mm Movie of a SOUP Raw Data Sample (1 reel)