Calibration of the plarization property of SOT

K.Ichimoto, Y.Suematsu, T.Shimizu, Y.Katsukawa, M.noguchi, M.Nakagiri, M.Miyashita, S.Tsuneta, T.Tarbell, D.Shine, C.Hoffumann, D.Elmore, B.Lites and SOT team

An end-to-end testing of SOT using natural sunlight was conducted in June 2005 with a heliostat at Mitaka. During the testing, we performed the calibration of the polarization characteristics of SOT. Well calibrated sheet polarizers (linear and circular) was placed on the OTA to controle the incident Stokes vector, and the polarimeter response matrix, X, was determided for the spectropolarimeter (SP) and the narrowband filter instrument (NFI), where X is defined by by S_out = X S_in with S_in is the Stokes vector incident to the OTA and S_out is the Stokes vector produced by the onboard demodulation. It is found for SP that the X matrix can be regarded as uniform over each left and right CCD and for scan positions. X matrix for NFI shutterless mode can be regarded as uniform in each left and right half of the CCD, but they have a mutual rotation of about 2.8deg. which should be corrected in the data reduction. We suggest to determin the first colums of the X matrix more accurately after launch using the continuum in data obtained in orbit. The sensitivity of SOT on polarization (and also on magnetic fields) for all wavelengths observed by NFI are also discussed.

Correspondence

Kiyoshi Ichimoto (ichimoto@solar.mtk.nao.ac.jp), NAOJ

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