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Image calibration between the Extreme Ultraviolet Imagers on Solar Orbiter and the Solar Dynamics Observatory

  • C. Schirninger
  • , R. Jarolim
  • , A. M. Veronig
  • , A. Jungbluth
  • , L. Freischem
  • , J. E. Johnson
  • , V. Delouille
  • , L. Dolla
  • , A. Spalding
  • University of Graz
  • National Center for Atmospheric Research
  • European Space Agency - ESA
  • University of Oxford
  • University of Valencia
  • Royal Observatory of Belgium
  • Trillium Technologies Inc. (Trillium USA)

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

To study and monitor the Sun and its atmosphere, various space missions have been launched in the past decades. With rapid improvement in technology and different mission requirements, the data products are subject to constant change. However, for such long-term studies as solar variability or multi-instrument investigations, uniform data series are required. In this study, we built on and expanded the instrument-to-instrument translation (ITI) framework, which provides unpaired image translations. We applied the tool to data from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), specifically the Full Sun Imager (FSI) on Solar Orbiter and the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). This approach allowed us to create a homogeneous dataset that combines the two extreme ultraviolet (EUV) imagers in the 174/171 Å and 304 Å channels. We demonstrate that ITI is able to provide image calibration between Solar Orbiter and SDO EUV imagers, independent of the varying orbital position of Solar Orbiter. The comparison of the intercalibrated light curves derived from 174/171 Å and 304 Å filtergrams from EUI and AIA shows that ITI can provide uniform data series that outperform a standard baseline calibration. We evaluate the perceptual similarity in terms of the Fréchet inception distance, which demonstrates that ITI achieves a significant improvement of perceptual similarity between EUI and AIA. The study provides intercalibrated observations from Solar Orbiter/EUI/FSI with SDO/AIA, enabling a homogeneous dataset suitable for solar cycle studies and multi-viewpoint investigations.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberA152
Number of pages10
JournalAstronomy and Astrophysics
Volume703
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 14 2025
Externally publishedYes

Funding

This research has received financial support from NASA award 22-MDRAIT22-0018 (No. 80NSSC23K1045) and managed by Trillium Technologies, Inc. The research was in part sponsored by the DynaSun project and has thus received funding under the Horizon Europe programme of the European Union under grant agreement (no. 101131534). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union and therefore the European Union cannot be held responsible for them. CS was supported by the University of Graz EST (European Solar Telescope) program and the Guest Investigator Program of the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB). RJ was supported by the NASA Jack-Eddy Fellowship. LD was supported by the PRODEX Programme of the European Space Agency (ESA) under contract number 4000136424. We thankfully acknowledge David Berghmans for providing the Solar Orbiter data and the valuable comments to the paper. Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA. The EUI instrument was built by CSL, IAS, MPS, MSSL/UCL, PMOD/WRC, ROB, LCF/IO with funding from the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO/PRODEX PEA 4000112292 and 4000134088); the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES); the UK Space Agency (UKSA); the Bundesministerium fur Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWi) through the Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR); and the Swiss Space Office (SSO). This research has made use of AstroPy (Astropy Collaboration 2022), SunPy (The SunPy Community et al. 2020) and PyTorch (Paszke et al. 2017).

FundersFunder number
NASA22-MDRAIT22-0018, 80NSSC23K1045
DynaSun project
Horizon Europe programme of the European Union101131534
University of Graz EST (European Solar Telescope) program
Guest Investigator Program of the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB)
NASA Jack-Eddy Fellowship
PRODEX Programme of the European Space Agency (ESA)4000136424
Belgian Federal Science Policy Office4000112292, 4000134088
Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES)
UK Space Agency (UKSA)
Swiss Space Office (SSO)
Bundesministerium fur Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWi) through the Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR)

    Keywords

    • Sun: atmosphere
    • Sun: corona
    • Sun: heliosphere
    • telescopes
    • Telescopes

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