The Coronal Diagnostic Spectrometer (CDS) on SOHO has been operating since 1996, recording EUV spectra of the solar corona and transition region. The instrument operations are carried out by the Principal Investigator team from the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK. We want to inform the community that the funding of CDS will stop in September 2013 and the CDS operations will cease from October. CDS users are therefore advised they have only three months left to obtain new observations. CDS studies can be arranged jointly with Hinode, SDO or IRIS (if it launches soon).

CDS measures spectral line profiles in two wavelength bands, 30.8 – 37.8nm and 51 – 63nm, which are used to derive essential information about the coronal and transition region plasmas (temperature, emission measure, flow speeds, elemental composition) in the temperature range from 30,000 degrees K to a few million degrees K. Unique to CDS are bright lines of Oxygen and Helium emitted at transition region temperatures. CDS can provide rastered images in different spectral lines.

The observing requests should be sent to cdsplanner[at]solar.bnsc.rl.ac.uk Past CDS data are available from the SOHO archive http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/. We will send a final update on the CDS status after the end of operations.