SOHO? No, SOSO

Abstract

The March 29, 1988, Eos contains a lengthy and well‐written lead article about the joint ESA‐NASA (European Space Agency‐National Aeronautics and Space Administration) SOHO‐Cluster mission, one of ESA's cornerstones (“Cluster and SOHO: A Joint Endeavor by ESA and NASA to Address Problems in Solar, Heliospheric, and Space Plasma Physics,” p. 177). However, the article contains some gross inconsistencies, which, without careful review, can lead to serious misunderstandings. Although the stated scientific goals include the “…investigation of the physical processes that form and heat the solar corona, maintain it, and give rise to the expanding solar wind”, the selected payload will not include in situ measurements of the solar wind or interplanetary magnetic field, as stated in the article as being essential to achieving these aims. This is seen upon review of the SOHO instrumentation listed in Table 1. The reader may also be misled by the colorful frontispiece, which portrays the SOHO spacecraft with what can only be obviously a magnetometer boom and by the text of the article which mentions the inclusion of a magnetometer boom. However, SOHO, as it is presently configured, does not contain either a magnetometer or a boom, nor is there any solar wind analyzer of the type commonly flown on past heliospheric missions. Thus, we suggest that the acronym SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) is inappropriate and should be changed to SOSO…Solar Only, Solar Observatory.