National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Marshall Space Flight Center

Hinode (Solar-B)

Hinode (Solar-B)

News Archive - 2007



**** Please peruse the SOT Picture of the Day catalog for additional image updates prior to 2010. (Also available through the Gallery.)



2007 Dec 7:

EIS News: Hinode Reveals New Insights About The Origin Of Solar Wind

2007 Dec 7:

Hinode Science Center News: Hinode Featured in Science

2007 Nov 30:

Research using Hinode data by NASA/MSFC's Dr. Jonathan Cirtain (and others) will be featured in the Dec 7 issue of Science. See the special issue.

2007 Nov 30:

Hinode Science Center News: PASJ Hinode Special Issue Released

2007 Nov 5:

Operations News: Data from the Solar Optical Telescope on Hinode is freely available to the community following the mission's open data policy. Many scientists have begun to analyze photospheric and chromospheric observations of unprecedented quality from SOT's Broadband Filter Imager and Spectro-Polarimeter. Recently a larger variety of data has become available from the third instrument channel, the Narrowband Filter Imager (NFI). The NFI has observed in all of its spectral bands and collected filtergrams, longitudinal magnetograms, Dopplergrams and Stokes IQUV images at various wavelengths. Several Fe I lines formed in the photosphere, Na D1 and Mg b2 in the low chromosphere, and H-alpha are all being observed. Na D1 is the default line for longitudinal magnetic and Doppler observations, due to its higher light level and more robust prefilter. The Solarsoft routine fg_prep is being updated to handle the additional observation types. See the SOT website for information about NFI images and their processing.

2007 Aug 30:

XRT News: The XRT CCD has experienced some degradation due to contamination that appeared after a short CCD bake-out in July. The contamination is manifest by small (~5 pixel diameter) spots on the detector. The spots cover somewhat less than 4% of the CCD area.They are seen in G-band images and in the thinner x-ray filters (Al_mesh, Al_poly, Ti_poly, C_poly and Be_thin, with decreasing effect in the order listed). The origin of the contamination is not understood at this time.

The XRT team is modifying the software in the SSWIDL tree to give scientists two ways of analyzing XRT data taken after the contamination event:

(1) a "touch-up" program that will replace the affected pixels with an average signal from near-by unaffected pixels.

(2) a "bad-pixel" map that allows scientists to avoid using the affected pixels in their analysis.

The touch-up program is applied to the quick-look images that are being distributed to web-pages and should be used when constructing movies and studying morphological changes. This same program will be available as a switch to the XRT_PREP code that converts level 0 data to level 1 data.

The XRT team is working to develop a cleaning program that will preserve the photometric information available below the spots. This programs will be distributed to the XRT user community through the SSWIDL distribution.

In addition the XRT team will develop programs that correct for the decrease in "filter-dependent" transmission between Nov-2006 and July-2007 caused by the accumulation of contaminants on the CCD. These corrections are particularly important for scientists using XRT data to estimate temperatures (e.g. via filter ratios).

The XRT team has set up an email distribution for users of XRT data. To subscribe to this list send an email to: xrt_users-request [at] head.cfa.harvard.edu To reduce the amount of spam on this list, users are accepted by positive confirmation at SAO. Please include your signature file when requesting admission to this list. The XRT team will use the list to keep the community up-to-date on the latest analysis tools and developments. Users may use this list to ask questions about analysis, report bugs and discuss analysis techniques with other users. Email to this list will be archived at: xrt_users off the community page.

2007 Aug 29:

Conference News: AGU Special Session SH11:Coronal Jets, X-ray Bright Points and the Fast Solar Wind:

Recent observations of the solar corona have revealed that x-ray jets occur with far more frequency than previously reported. These jets eminate from multi-polar x-ray bright points, with not all bright points producing jets. To discuss the status of the studies using these observations, the American Geophysical Union Fall meeting will feature a special session that highlights observations from both Hinode and STEREO.

2007 Aug 22:

EIS News: Solar speed camera on Hinode helps in unravelling long-standing solar mysteries

2007 Aug 13:

XRT News: XRT is undergoing extended bakeout. Scientific observations are minimized during this period, and scheduled externally requested observations are deferred. The length of the bakeout period has not yet been determined, at this time.

2007 Jun 20:

EIS News: Hinode at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition

2007 May 27:

Operations News: All Hinode data have now been released. See the Data Policy page for more details.

2007 May 27:

Hinode Science Center News: Dynamic Corona Seen by Hinode/XRT

2007 May 1:

Hinode Science Center News: Inauguration of Hinode Science Center

2007 Mar 25:

EIS News: Structure Of The Sun's Magnetic Field

2007 Mar 21:

NASA News: Lots of press coverage after a recent NASA Science Update. For instance, see Reuters.

2007 Mar 21:

Hinode Science Center News: Massive Flare on 13 December 2006

2007 Mar 19:

Hinode Science Center News: Total Eclipse in Orbit

2007 Mar 14:

NASA News: A NASA Science Update at 1 p.m. EDT Wednesday, March 21 will be held to discuss never-before-seen observations from an international mission studying the sun. Learn More

2007 Feb 17:

Hinode Science Center News: Partial Eclipse

2007 Feb 9:

Operations News: Hinode data will be released for the first time, at the Solar Physics Division Meeting to be held in Hawaii, May 27-31. A workshop will follow immediately to explain how data are to be accessed and analyzed.