Instruments

Research activities carried out in the frame of Programme National Soleil-Terre (PNST) rely on both gound-based and space-borne instruments. One of the main objectives of PNST is to stimulate coordinated studies and to optimize scientific return of these instruments.

On the space-borne instrument side, two missions contributed to prominent structuring of PNST activities, viz.,
- SOHO, ESA solar observatory with a large participation of french research teams. The comprehensive SOHO payload provided unprecedented datasets for studies of the structure and the dynamcis of the solar corona as well as in situ measurements of solar wind particles. Halpha coronograph at Pic du Midi also provides additional measurements to those of SOHO-LASCO near the solar limb.
- CLUSTER, another ESA cornerstone mission with prominent participation of french research teams. CLUSTER consists of four spacecrafts traveling together at variable distances with a comprehensive suite of instruments that allows us to study key magnetospheric regions as well as collisionless plasma processes.

Ground-based instruments involve :
- The solar telescope THEMIS (Canarias Islands) to measure the 3 components of the Sun magnetic field as well as velocity field in the photosphere and chromosphere with high spectral resolution. The Jean Rosch telescope at Pic du Midi provides added value to the THEMIS observations with measurements of the photosphere and chromosphere structure at high angular resolution.
- The radio-heliograph in Nancay is a unique instrument for radio-imaging of coronal structures (coronal holes, filament related cavities, active regions...) and rapid radio-imaging of phenomena related to the Sun activity.
- ESPADONS is a multi-scale spectro-polarimeter for CFHT that aims at studying stellar magnetism and circumstellar environment geometry (in collaboration with Programme National de Physique Stellaire, PNPS)
- EISCAT/ESR and SuperDARN, incoherent and coherent radar networks dedicated to analysis of the auroral and polar iononosphere and ionospheric convection. These measurements also allow us to put CLUSTER observations into a more global perspective.
- EPIS, Michelson interferometer dedicated to measurements of neutral winds in the thermosphere and in the high mesosphere.
In addition to these instruments, a variety of ground-based experiments are available for PNST such as monitoring of solar activity in Meudon and Nancay, decametric network in Nancay, neutron monitors (under resposnbility of IPEV) for high energy (> 500 MeV) nucleons in Terre-Adélie and Kerguelen Islands.
 
The scientific return of these instruments is optimized using three main data centers :
- BASS 2000 whose objective is archiving and online distribution of french ground-based solar data (THEMIS, Nancay radio-heliograph, Nancay decametric network, Pic du Midi coronograph, systematic Meudon observations).
- MEDOC is one the European Center for SOHO data archiving. It is also a European center for operations and analysis of the spacecraft. Some TRACE, CORONAS/F and SDO data are archived at MEDOC as well.
- CDPP, Centre de Données de Physique des Plasmas, gathers both ground-based and in situ measurements for analysis of the magnetosphere and of the interplanetary medium.