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Solar Orbiter Planning - for coordination with external parties - Solar Orbiter
Solar Orbiter Planning - for coordination with external parties
♣ This current page shows the planning for the remote-sensing (RS) windows 25, 26, 27
Remote sensing window (RSW) placement
| Window | Start | End | Heliocentric Distance Range [au] |
Heliographic Latitude Range [deg] |
SC-Sun-Earth Angle Range [deg] |
||||||||||
| RSW25(15 d) | 2026-02-12T00:00:00 | 2026-02-27T00:00:00 | 0.489 | 0.398 | 0.320 | -12.6913 | -16.0789 | -15.8578 | 24.83831 | 41.83523 | 72.82207 | ||||
| RSW26(10 d) | 2026-02-28T00:00:00 |
|
0.305 | 0.294 | 0.317 | -14.07862881 | -7.67173926 | 2.44070768 | 84.62097478 |
|
139.5451123 | ||||
| RSW27(5 d) | 2026-03-29T00:00:00 | 2026-04-03T00:00:00 | 0.560 | 0.584 | 0.606 |
|
|
16.83570853 | -164.6354565 | -162.4301852 | -160.5392784 |
Overall science planning - list of SOOPs run during the period
Overall objectives:
Solar Orbiter is in its high-latitude science phase, with views of the South and North poles, and a maximum heliographic latitude of +/- 16.83 degrees will be reached.
As such, new Solar Orbiter observing plans (SOOPs) dedicated to the observations of the poles will be run. A combination of SOOPs targeting different regions, such as active regions, the sources of the fast wind and the coronal state, will be run too.
A detailed list of all these SOOPs with their timings can be found at this link.
For IRIS coordination, please refer to internal spreadsheet for the precise OBSID; Requests marked with Y with no OBSID are standard coordinations.
Detailed pointings will be provided shortly after the pointing decision meetings (see below, "Detailed pointings").
Detailed pointings
The table lists the times at which the spacecraft pointing will change, and the type of target that we will point at. Times in the 3rd and 4th columns are UT at Earth.
Pointings that are already fixed are highlighted in green – light green where the pointing is already fixed months earlier, or dark green where coordinates have now been set by a pointing decision . Where pointing coordinates have a white background, provisional pointings have been input that can still be modified at any point until the time in the "Pointing Decision Day" column.
The other pointings will be updated at the latest 48 hours in advance of the actual observations.
Definition of pointings:
POINT_CENTRE = pointing is at disk center for Solar Orbiter
POINT_FEATURE = a specific target followed by Solar Orbiter, tracking the rotation of the Sun.
POINT_PATTERN = pointing that follows a certain pattern (e.g. mosaic)
Those pointings which stay on a fixed coordinate on the Sun for Solar Orbiter (e.g. POINT_CENTRE) will of course drift with respect to the Earth's perspective because of the relative motion of spacecraft. For that reason, and only for pointings attached to a SOOP, coordinates and times at the start and end of those pointings are also included in the table below.
An additional source of contextual information is available through screenshots uploaded by SOOP coordinators to this drive at their discretion. These are made available here.
Detailed sequences of observations for SPICE and EUI
Context Solar Orbiter orbit during this time
Plots are in GSE (geocentric solar ecliptic) coordinates, so Earth is at [0,0], the Sun is at [1,0]. The plot is the projection of the orbit on the ecliptic plane.