The NOAA Goes-12 Solar X-Ray Imager (SXI) 1. Instrument, Operations, and Data
Hill, S. M.;
Pizzo, V. J.;
Balch, C. C.;
Biesecker, D. A.;
Bornmann, P.;
Hildner, E.;
Lewis, L. D.;
Grubb, R. N.;
Husler, M. P.;
Prendergast, K.;
Vickroy, J.;
Greer, S.;
Defoor, T.;
Wilkinson, D. C.;
Hooker, R.;
Mulligan, P.;
Chipman, E.;
Bysal, H.;
Douglas, J. P.;
Reynolds, R.;
Davis, J. M.;
Wallace, K. S.;
Russell, K.;
Freestone, K.;
Bagdigian, D.;
Page, T.;
Kerns, S.;
Hoffman, R.;
Cauffman, S. A.;
Davis, M. A.;
Studer, R.;
Berthiaume, F. E.;
Saha, T. T.;
Berthiume, G. D.;
Farthing, H.;
Zimmermann, F.
The Solar X-ray Imager (SXI) was launched 23 July 2001 on NOAA's GOES-12 satellite and completed post-launch testing 20 December 2001. Beginning 22 January 2003 it has provided nearly uninterrupted, full-disk, soft X-ray solar images, with a continuous frame rate significantly exceeding that for previous similar instruments. The SXI provides images with a 1 min cadence and a single-image (adjustable) dynamic range near 100. A set of metallic thin-film filters provides temperature discrimination in the 0.6 – 6.0 nm bandpass. The spatial resolution of approximately 10 arcsec FWHM is sampled with 5 arcsec pixels. Three instrument degradations have occurred since launch, two affecting entrance filters and one affecting the detector high-voltage system. This work presents the SXI instrument, its operations, and its data processing, including the impacts of the instrument degradations. A companion paper (Pizzo et al., this issue) presents SXI performance prior to an instrument degradation that occurred on 5 November 2003 and thus applies to more than 420000 soft X-ray images of the Sun.