MULTISPECTRAL SOLAR TELESCOPE ARRAY .5. TEMPERATURE DIAGNOSTIC RESPONSE TO THE OPTICALLY THIN SOLAR PLASMA

We have developed compact soft x-ray, extreme ultraviolet (EUV), and far-ultraviolet (FUV) multilayer coated telescopes for the study of the solar chromosphere, corona, and corona/solar wind interface. Because these systems operate at short wavelengths (approximately 40 angstrom < lambda < 1550 angstrom), the modest apertures of 40 to 127 mm allow observations at very high angular resolution (0.1 to 0.7 arcsec). In addition to permitting traditional normal incidence optical configurations (such as Cassegrain, Ritchey-Chretien, and Herschelian configurations) to be used at soft x-ray/EUV wavelengths, multilayer coatings also allow a narrow wavelength band (lambda/DELTA-lambda approximately 15-100) to be selected for imaging. The resulting telescopes provide a very powerful and flexible diagnostic instrument for the study of both the fine-scale structure of the chromosphere/corona interface and the large-scale structure of the corona and corona/solar wind interface. In previous papers, we have described a new solar rocket payload, the Multi-Spectral Solar Telescope Array (MSSTA), which is composed of 17 of these compact telescopes. In the present paper, we report on the ability of the MSSTA payload to obtain temperature diagnostic information about the optically thin solar plasma. We also discuss applications of this information to studies of coronal structure.