Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment (LASCO)

Welcome to the home page of the LASCO instrument, brought to you by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Space Science Divison's Solar Physics Branch. LASCO is one of several instruments on board the enormously successful SOHO mission, a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

Researchers in the Solar Physics Branch have been involved in observational and theoretical studies of the solar atmosphere since the early years of the space age. Experiments developed at NRL have flown on NASA missions such as Skylab/ATM (see the picture above), the OSO satellite series, the Space Shuttle STS-3, Spacelab-2 and ATLAS missions.

Site Index

Here is a brief annotated index of this site to help you look around at what we do here:

Missions, Projects, and Programs

Our branch has been actively involved in a number of projects, and have several in development right now. See what projects are ongoing, look around the previous efforts, and check out the recent proposed and planned projects, including the highly-anticipated STEREO Mission.

Solar and Astrophysical Database Projects

The Space Physics Data System's HRTS/SKYLAB database with solar data from the Solar Physics Branch's spectrograph and spectroheliograph instruments flown as part of the HRTS, Spacelab 2 and SKYLAB missions. This database is the under sponsorship of NASA's Space Physics Data System.

The CHIANTI database for the calculation of astrophysical spectra. This database contains the most recent atomic data for calculating a collisionally dominated spectrum and is maintained by an international consortium of scientists.