The Wide-Field Imager (WFI) instruments for the PUNCH Mission: Overview and Current Status

The PUNCH WFI instruments are a constellation of three wide-field imagers for the PUNCH Small Explorer mission. The WFI instruments incorporate conventional optics and deep baffles to attenuate stray light and image visible light that is Thompson scattered by free electrons in the outer corona and young solar wind. Together with the Near Field Imager (NFI) instrument, the four microsatellites are synchronized as a single observatory and will produce continuous, deep-field, 3D (polarized) visible-light images of the corona and solar wind from 6Rs to 190Rs. Integration and test of the WFI flight instruments are well underway. We present an overview of the WFI design, performance, and hardware development status.