An improved wide-field camera for imaging Earth's plasmasphere at 30.4 nm

The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (IMAGE/EUV) aboard NASA's IMAGE mission studied the distribution of singly ionized helium (He+) in the Earth's plasmasphere by imaging its emission at 30.4 nm. This instrument consisted of three separate camera heads, each with a 28° field-of-view, with 0.6°resolution. We describe an improved imaging system that can simultaneously image a 40° field-of-view with 0.45° resolution utilizing only one compact camera head and detector. This improved imager also increases sensitivity over the heritage EUV imager by a factor of four due to improvements in optical coatings, detector technology, and a larger entrance aperture.

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