Aditya-L1's VELC payload produces first-of-their-kind Doppler velocity images of the solar corona

Key facts

• Scientists at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) have generated Doppler velocity images of activities in the solar corona using data from the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) payload onboard India's first solar mission, Aditya-L1.
• These images are expected to provide information on the propagation of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) along the Sun-Earth direction, which was unavailable until now.
• Using the Doppler effect concept applied to light waves, positive and negative Doppler velocities indicate solar plasma moving away from and towards the observer, respectively.
• The VELC data processing software was developed by Dr V. Muthupriyal, Senior Project Scientist with the VELC payload operations team at IIA, and her team.
• The technical details of the data processing were published in the Astrophysical Journal after international peer review.
• According to Prof. R. Ramesh, Senior Professor at IIA and Principal Investigator of the VELC project, only VELC can currently generate such images due to its unique spectroscopic observing capability in the visible wavelength range from the Lagrangian L1 position in the Sun-Earth system.
• The processed Doppler velocity images will be disseminated to the scientific community in addition to data already in the public domain.