The High Energy Telescope (HET) on the Solar Orbiter Mission: Overview and First Data
Abstract
As part of the Energetic Particle Detector (EPD) suite onboard Solar Orbiter, the High Energy Telescope has been launched on its mission to the Sun on February 9, 2020, and has been measuring energetic particles since it was first switched on about two weeks after launch. Using their double-ended telescopes, the two HET units provide measurements of ions above 7 MeV/nuc and electrons above 300 keV in four viewing directions. Each HET unit contains four silicon solid state detectors and a BGO scin- tillation crystal, a setup which allows to discriminate particle species using a variant of the dE/dx-E method. We introduce the capabilities and data products of HET, and show first data from its observations of Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs) and Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) during Solar Orbiter’s cruise phase.
