Optical imaging detector for solar corona intensity oscillations study

Intensity of the solar corona is million times fainter than that of the photosphere in the visible wavelengths. The solar corona can be observed either during occurrences of total solar eclipses when the bright photospheric light is blocked by moon or by using an instrument called the `coronagraph'. The existence of waves in the solar corona creates high frequency intensity, velocity and/ or line-width oscillations. These are interesting objectives for scientific community involved in research on solar physics. Amplitudes of these oscillations are feeble and need to be detected under high background photon flux. Photon noise generated by the background flux is significantly higher compared to peak signals generated by intensity oscillations. Identification of appropriate imaging detector and detection methodology to detect low amplitude oscillations overriding on high background flux is important for the design of coronagraph instrument. This paper discusses developed test setup to simulate intensity oscillations, with proposed detection methodology and also describes results of study carried out on two candidate imaging detector arrays.