{"id":4034,"date":"2024-11-06T12:50:28","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T07:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=4034"},"modified":"2025-10-14T11:38:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T06:08:48","slug":"what-is-the-visible-emission-line-coronagraph-velc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/what-is-the-visible-emission-line-coronagraph-velc\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC)?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC):<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It is the <strong>primary payload of the <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/upsc-exam\/aditya-l1\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Aditya-L1 Mission<\/strong><\/a>&#8211;<strong>India\u2019s first mission to observe the Sun<\/strong> from a vantage point 1.5 million kilometres from the earth.<\/li>\n<li>It is an <strong>internally occulted solar coronagraph<\/strong> capable of simultaneous <strong>imaging, spectroscopy, and spectro-polarimetry<\/strong> close to the solar limb.<\/li>\n<li>It is <strong>built by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA)<\/strong> at its CREST (Centre for Research and Education in Science and Technology) campus at Hosakote, Karnataka.<\/li>\n<li>The VELC consists of a coronagraph, spectrograph, polarimetry module, and detectors, aside from auxiliary optics.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Purpose:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>It will <strong>observe the solar corona<\/strong>, which is the tenuous, outermost layer of the solar atmosphere.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>VELC can <strong>image the solar corona down to 1.05 times the solar radius<\/strong>, which is the closest any such payload has imaged.<\/li>\n<li>It will <strong>analyze the coronal temperature, plasma velocity, density<\/strong>, etc.<\/li>\n<li>It will also <strong>study Coronal Mass Ejections<\/strong> (CMEs) and the <strong>solar wind.\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What is a Coronagraph?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It is a specialized instrument designed to <strong>block out the light of the sun<\/strong> so that <strong>researchers can glimpse the burning star&#8217;s<\/strong> hot, thin, <strong>outermost layer<\/strong>, called the <strong>corona<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>French astronomer Bernard Lyot invented<\/strong> the coronagraph in the 1930s.<\/li>\n<li>The sun&#8217;s <strong>corona is normally visible only during solar eclipses<\/strong>, when the moon&#8217;s shadow covers the bright central layers of our parent star and allows its dimmer corona to appear.<\/li>\n<li>A <strong>coronagraph mimics this natural phenomenon with a circular mask that sits inside a telescope<\/strong> and <strong>selectively blocks the<\/strong> bulk of the <strong>sun&#8217;s light.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The specialized coronagraphs act as <strong>filters on the central star,<\/strong> allowing the tiny fragments of planetary light to shine through.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Q1<\/strong>: What are Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs)?<\/h3>\n<p>CMEs are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun&#8217;s atmosphere\u2014the corona, that propagate outward into interplanetary space. During a CME, the sun releases a colossal amount of material, including electrons, protons, and heavier ions, as well as magnetic fields.<\/p>\n<p><strong>News<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newindianexpress.com\/nation\/2024\/Nov\/05\/first-significant-results-from-payload-onboard-maiden-solar-mission-aditya-l1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">\u2018First significant\u2019 results from payload onboard maiden solar mission Aditya-L1<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Visible Emission Line Coronagraph is the primary payload of the Aditya-L1 Mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4035,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4034","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}