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The Metis coronagraph is one of the remote sensing instruments hosted onboard the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission. Metis is devoted to carry out thefirst simultaneous imaging of the solar corona in both visible light (VL) andultraviolet (UV). High-energy particles penetrate spacecraft materials and maylimit the performance of on-board instruments. A study of galactic cosmic-ray(GCR) tracks observed in the first VL images gathered by Metis during thecommissioning phase for a total of 60 seconds of exposure time is presentedhere. A similar analysis is planned for the UV channel. A prediction of the GCRflux up to hundreds of GeV is made here for the first part of the Solar Orbitermission to study the Metis coronagraph performance. GCR model predictions arecompared to observations gathered on board Solar Orbiter by the EPD/HETexperiment in the range 10 MeV-100 MeV in the summer 2020 and with previousmeasurements. Estimated cosmic-ray fluxes above 70 MeV n$^{-1}$ have been alsoparameterized and used for Monte Carlo simulations aiming at reproducing thecosmic-ray track observations in the Metis coronagraph VL images. The sameparameterizations can also be used to study the performance of other detectors.By comparing observations of cosmic-ray tracks in the Metis VL images withFLUKA Monte Carlo simulations of cosmic-ray interactions in the VL detector, itis found that cosmic rays fire a fraction of the order of 10$^{-4}$ of thewhole image pixel sample. Therefore, cosmic rays do not affect sensibly thequality of Metis VL images. It is also found that the overall efficiency forcosmic-ray identification in the Metis VL images is approximately equal to thecontribution of Z$>$2 particles. As a result, the Metis coronagraph may playthe role of a proton monitor for long-term GCR variations during the overallmission duration.

Cosmic-ray flux predictions and observations for and with Metis on board Solar Orbiter