Total-light imager with flat spectral response for solar photometric measurements

Certain applications in imaging photometry and radiometry require a telescope-detector system with (preferably constant) response over a wide spectral range from the ultraviolet through the infrared. We describe the design and characterization of the Solar Bolometric Imager (SBI), a 30-cm-aperture Dall-Kirkham telescope combined with a gold-blacked, 80, 000-element thermal array detector. Our SBI prototype provides spectrally uniform imaging in total solar light (0.28-2.6 mum) of heat-flow inhomogeneities at the solar photosphere, with better than 5-arc sec angular resolution over a 6.5 x 13 arc min field of view. A balloon-borne SBI would avoid most atmospheric transmission variation over this spectral range, enabling accurate study of the sources of total irradiance variation.