"VIEWS FROM THE SUN AND OTHER GAMMA-RAY EMITTERS -
FIRST RESULTS FROM RHESSI"
Solar flares are the most powerful explosions in the solar
system, releasing
up to 10^32-10^33 ergs in ~100-1000 s, and accelerating
ions to ~MeV-10s of
GeV and electrons to ~10 keV-100s of MeV energy. The
accelerated electrons
(and sometimes ions) appear to contain the bulk of the
flare energy released.
I will present the first results from the RHESSI Small
Explorer mission
launched February 5, 2002. RHESSI utilizes rotating modulation
collimators for
imaging (to 2.3 arcsec) and cooled germanium detectors
for spectroscopy (~keV
resolution from ~3 keV to 17 MeV) of the hard X-ray/gamma-ray
continuum and
gamma-ray lines emitted by the energetic electrons and
ions, respectively.