UV observations with the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer

The Transition Region and Coronal Explorer is a space-borne solar telescope featuring high spatial and temporal resolution. TRACE images emission from solar plasmas in three extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths and several u ltraviolet (UV) wavelengths, covering selected ion temperatures from 6000 K to 1 MK. The TRACE UV channel employs special optics to collect high-resol ution solar images of the H I L alpha line at 1216 Angstrom, the C Iv reson ance doublet at 1548 and 1550 Angstrom, the Uv continuum near 1550 A, and a lso a white-light image covering the spectrum from 2000-8000 Angstrom. We present an analytical technique for creating photometrically accurate im ages of the C Iv resonance lines from the data products collected by the TR ACE UV channel. We use solar spectra from several space-borne instruments t o represent a variety of solar conditions ranging from quiet Sun to active regions to derive a method, using a linear combination of filtered UV image s, to generate an image of solar C rv 1550 Angstrom emission. Systematic an d statistical error estimates are also presented. This work indicates that C iv measurements will be reliable for intensities greater than 10(14) phot ons s(-1) cm(-2) sr(-1) This suggests that C Iv 1550 Angstrom images will b e feasible with statistical error below 20% in the magnetic network, bright points, active regions, flares and other features bright in C Iv. Below th is intensity the derived image is dominated by systematic error and read no ise from the CCD.