Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
The Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) and the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) are among the experiments aboard SOHO, a joint ESA/NASA sponsored spacecraft positioned in 1995 at the L1 Lagrange point between the Earth and Sun. LASCO comprises three white light coronographs with CCD imaging detectors that image the corona from 1.1 to 32 solar radii. The NRL-designed LASCO has revolutionized our understanding of the Earth-Sun system proving without a doubt that Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and not solar flares are the principal cause of geomagnetic storms. The EIT images the solar corona and transition region at four EUV wavelengths each representing distinct temperature ranges. INTERFEROMETRICS designed, programmed, and tested the instrument software that operates the LASCO and EIT instruments including data gathering, image compression, downlinking, telemetry decommutation, and image display. INTERFEROMETRICS designed and implemented the LASCO image database used for indexing and accessing the archived coronagraph images. INTERFEROMETRICS scientists supervised the discovery of comets in the LASCO images; a majority of the comets that have been discovered over all time were found in LASCO images.