HESSI RHESSI, which stands for Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager, is a space telescope which observes energetic flares from the Sun. A solar flare is an dynamic event on the Sun in which a large amount of energy is released quite rapidly. These energetic events heat the surrounding gas to temperatures over 10 million degrees Kelvin! The gas is so hot that it radiates X-rays and Gamma-rays. Such high energy light waves cannot penetrate Earth's atmosphere. This is lucky for those of us living on Earth, but it makes it difficult to study the details of solar flares. Solar scientists are trying to understand the processes that cause the release of such large amounts of energy so suddenly. In order to do this they must put telescopes in space to observe the energy from the solar flare before it is absorbed in Earth's atmosphere. RHESSI is a space-based solar telescope in orbit around Earth and helps scientists toward this goal by obtaining high resolution images and spectra of solar flares. TiNi Frangibolts were used to deploy solar panels. http://hessi.ssl.berkeley.edu/index.html close window