SWAP (instrument)


The "Sun Watcher using Active Pixel System Detector and Image Processing" telescope is a compact EUV imager on board the PROBA2 mission that will observe the Sun in extreme ultraviolet.
SWAP will provide images of the solar corona at a temperature of roughly 1 million degrees. This instrument was built upon the heritage of the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope which monitors the solar corona since 1996.
SWAP will continue the systematic CME watch program at an improved image cadence. With this higher cadence, SWAP will monitor events in the low solar corona that might be relevant for space weather. These events include EIT waves, EUV dimming regions and filament instabilities. SWAP will also take advantage of offpointings provided by the agility featured of PROBA2 platform to follows coronal mass ejections.
SWAP was built at the :fr:Centre spatial de Liège|Centre Spatial de Liege and will be operated from the PROBA-2 Science Center at the Royal Observatory of Belgium.
SWAP has been used to study coronal brightspot dynamics.