TRACE

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Illustration of TRACE
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Illustration of TRACE
Image of a sunspot taken by TRACE
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Image of a sunspot taken by TRACE

TRACE, or the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer is a NASA space telescope designed to investigate the connections between fine-scale magnetic fields and the associated plasma structures on the Sun by providing high resolution images and observation of the solar photosphere and transition region to the corona.

The satellite was built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Its telecope was constructed by a consortium lead by Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center. TRACE was launched in April 1998 on a Pegasus rocket, has a 30 cm aperture and 1024 x 1024 CCD detector giving an 8.5 arc minute field of view. The telescope is designed to take correlated images in a range of wavelengths from visible light, through the Lyman alpha line to far ultraviolet. The different wavelength passbands correspond to plasma emission temperatures from 4,000 to 4,000,000 K.

TRACE is a SMEX or Small Explorer mission.

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Sun Spacecraft Missions
v  d  e
Orbiters: Pioneer 6, 7, 8 and 9 | Helios probes | Ulysses probe | Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) | Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager | Hinode | STEREO | TRACE | ACE
Sample return: Genesis (spacecraft)
Future: Solar Dynamics Observatory | Solar Orbiter
See also: Sun | Exploration of the Sun


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