Design and tests for the heliospheric imager of the STEREO mission

The Heliospheric Imager (HI) is part of the SECCHI suite of instruments on-board the two STEREO spacecrafts to be launched in 2005. The two HI instruments will provide stereographic image pairs of solar coronal plasma and coronal mass ejections (CME) over a wide field of view (~90°), ranging from 13 to 330 R[SUB]0[/SUB]. These observations compliment the 15 R[SUB]0[/SUB] field of view of the solar corona obtained by the other SECCHI instruments (2 coronagraphs and an EUV imager). The key challenge of the instrument design is the rejection of the solar disk light, with total straylight attenuation of the order of 10[SUP]-13 [/SUP]to 10[SUP]-15[/SUP]. A multi-vane diffractive baffle system has been theoretically optimized to achieve the lower requirement (10[SUP]-13[/SUP] for HI-1) and is combined with a secondary baffling system to reach the 10[SUP]-15[/SUP] rejection performance in the second camera system (HI-2). This paper presents the last updates of the SECCHI/HI design concept, with the expected performance. A verification program is currently in progress. The on-going stray-light verification tests are discussed. A set of tests has been conducted in air, and under vacuum. The results are presented and compared with the expected theoretical data.