• CCOR Installation

    CCOR-1 installation on NOAA GOES-U. Photo Credit: Lockheed Martin.

  • CCOR CME Image

    Running difference image of a coronal mass ejection

  • CCOR Comet Image

    CCOR-1 Image of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS

  • CCOR CME Image

    CCOR-1 image of a Partial Halo Coronal Mass Ejection

  • CCOR Installation

    CCOR-1 installation on NOAA GOES-U. Photo Credit: Lockheed Martin.

Compact Coronagraph 1 (CCOR-1) 

  • The Moon Eclipsing the Sun Viewed Through CCOR-1

    Movie of the Moon transiting the CCOR-1 field of view, during the new Moon of April 27, 2025. At 9:25 UTC on April 27, the Moon partially eclipsed the Sun, which resulted in a drop of the instrumental stray-light. The instrument stray-light is dominated by the direct sunlight, so these eclipses are very useful to characterize that stray-light.

    CCOR-1 is on board GOES-19/GOES-East. GOES is on a geosynchronous orbit around the Earth. It circles the Earth in approximately 24 hours, while the Moon takes 29.5 days, from one new Moon to the next. As a result, the Moon goes retrograde as it transits the CCOR-1 field of view.

    What we see here is the night side of the Moon. We see it because of the Earth is reflecting some of the sunlight back on it. Although this light is very faint and cannot be seen from the Earth’s ground, CCOR is sensitive enough to pick it up from space.

    … more

  • GOES-19 with CCOR on board is Officially Operational

    As of April 7, 2025, GOES-19 is officially operational! A news release discussing this critical milestone can be seen here. Additionally, videos discussing the event are also provided below and via FOX Weather.

The Compact Coronagraph 1 (CCOR-1) on NOAA GOES-U

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) funded the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory to develop, build and test the CCOR series of operational solar coronagraphs.

CCOR stands for Compact Coronagraph. It is a series of white-light solar coronagraphs that are dedicated to performing space weather forecasts. It is used by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) to detect Coronal Mass Ejections, determine their trajectory, mass, and speed, in the goal of predicting any geo-effective impact at Earth, or elsewhere in the solar system. The CCOR-1 data are publicly available on NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI) website [https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/experimental/products/swfol1/ccor-1/].

The first CCOR, CCOR-1, is installed on the Solar Pointing Platform (SPP) of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite series, GOES, iteration U. GOES-U was launched on June 25, 2024, and was soon renamed GOES-19 after it reached geostationary orbit. Real time data of CCOR-1 are available on the SWPC website [Homepage | NOAA / NWS Space Weather Prediction Center]. CCOR-2 is installed on the SWFO-L1 spacecraft, scheduled for launch in Late 2025, and targeted to be in a Lissajous orbit around the L1 Lagrange point. Finally, a CCOR-3 is planned to be on board the European Space Agency Vigil spacecraft that will orbit around the L5 Lagrange point, scheduled for launch in 2031.

This movie shows a comet (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) passing through the CCOR Field of View while a CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) is happening. You can see the earth pass in front of the FOV a few times, this shows the straylight from the earth before and after the earth eclipses our instrument. The "snow flakes" are cosmic ray particles hitting our detector and small debris flying in front of the telescope.  Most  cosmic ray particles are scrubbed out using our onboard hardware algorithm.
You can download this movie directly as a 6.8MB mp4 file.

 

This movie shows examples of  Coronal Mass Ejection activity during Oct 26-30, 2024. A partial halo CME is observed on Oct 26. A sun grazing comet is also visible on Oct 27. Two strong CMEs are observed on Oct 28, a first one going East, and a second going West. Details about the internal structure of these CMEs are clearly seen, demonstrating the improved spatial resolution of CCOR-1 compared to LASCO C3.
You can download this movie directly as a 6.8MB mp4 file.

 

WISPR Pub Number 1