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A Dream of a Mission: Stellar Imager and Seismic ProbeThe Stellar Imager and Seismic Probe (SISP) is a mission to understand the various effects of magnetic fields of stars, the dynamos that generate them, and the internal structure and dynamics of the stars in which they exist. The ultimate goal is to achieve the best-possible forecasting of solar activity on times scales ranging up to decades, and an understanding of the impact of stellar magnetic activity on astrobiology and life in the Universe. The road to that goal will revolutionize our understanding of stars and stellar systems, the building blocks of the Universe. SISP will zoom in on what today - with few exceptions - we only know as point sources, revealing processes never before seen, thus providing a tool to astrophysics as fundamental as the microscope is to the study of life on Earth. SISP is an ultraviolet aperture-synthesis imager with 8-10 telescopes with meter-class apertures, and a central hub with focal-plane instrumentation that allows spectrophotometry in passbands as narrow as a few Angstroms up to hundreds of Angstroms. SISP will image stars and binaries with one hundred to one thousand resolution elements on their surface, and sound their interiors through asteroseismology to image internal structure, differential rotation, and large-scale circulations; this will provide accurate knowledge of stellar structure and evolution and complex transport processes, and will impact numerous branches of (astro)physics ranging from the Big Bang to the future of the Universe. Fitting naturally within the NASA long-term time line, SISP complements defined missions, and with them will show us entire other solar systems, from the central star to their orbiting planets.
Document ID
20000110134
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Preprint (Draft being sent to journal)
Authors
Carpenter, Kenneth G.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Schrijver, Carolus J.
(Stanford-Lockheed Inst. for Space Research United States)
Fisher, Richard R.
Date Acquired
August 19, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2000
Subject Category
Astrophysics
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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