Trace
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TRACE, or the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer is a NASA space telescope designed to investigate the connections between fine-scale magnetic fields and the associated plasma structures on the Sun by providing high resolution images and observation of the solar photosphere and transition region to the corona.
The satellite, launched in April 1998 on a Pegasus rocket, has a 30 cm aperture and 1024 x 1024 CCD detector giving an 8.5 arc minute field of view. The telescope is designed to take correlated images in a range of wavelengths from visible light, through the Lyman alpha line to far ultraviolet. The different wavelength passbands correspond to plasma emission temperatures from 4,000 to 4,000,000 K.
TRACE is a SMEX or Small Explorer mission.
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