Japanese satellite
Hinode
(
;
Japanese
:
ひので
,
IPA:
[cinode]
, Sunrise), formerly
Solar-B
, is a
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
Solar
mission with
United States
and
United Kingdom
collaboration. It is the follow-up to the
Yohkoh
(Solar-A) mission and it was launched on the final flight of the
M-V rocket
from
Uchinoura Space Center
,
Japan
on 22 September 2006 at 21:36
UTC
(23 September, 06:36
JST
). Initial orbit was perigee height 280 km, apogee height 686 km, inclination 98.3 degrees. Then the satellite maneuvered to the quasi-circular
Sun-synchronous orbit
over the day/night
terminator
, which allows near-continuous observation of the Sun. On 28 October 2006, the probe's instruments captured their first images.
The data from Hinode are being downloaded to the
Norwegian
, terrestrial
Svalsat
station, operated by
Kongsberg
a few kilometres west of
Longyearbyen
,
Svalbard
. From there, data is transmitted by
Telenor
through a fibre-optic
network
to mainland Norway at
Harstad
, and on to data users in North America, Europe and Japan.
Mission
[
edit
]
Hinode was planned as a three-year mission to explore the magnetic fields of the Sun. It consists of a coordinated set of optical,
extreme ultraviolet
(EUV), and
x-ray
instruments to investigate the interaction between the Sun's magnetic field and its corona. The result will be an improved understanding of the mechanisms that power the solar atmosphere and drive solar eruptions. The EUV imaging spectrometer (EIS) was built by a consortium led by the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (
MSSL
) in the
UK
.
[3]
NASA
, the space agency of the United States, was involved with three science instrument components: the Focal Plane Package (FPP), the X-Ray Telescope (XRT), and the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) and shares operations support for science planning and instrument command generation.
[4]
As of March 2024
[update]
, the operation is planned to continue until 2033.
[5]
Instruments
[
edit
]
Hinode carries three main instruments to study the
Sun
.
SOT (Solar Optical Telescope)
[
edit
]
A 0.5 meter Gregorian
optical telescope
with an
angular resolution
of about 0.2
arcsecond
over the
field of view
of about 400 x 400 arcsec. At the SOT
focal plane
, the Focal Plane Package (FPP) built by the
Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory
in
Palo Alto, California
consists of three optical instruments: the Broadband Filter Imager (BFI) which produces images of the solar photosphere and chromosphere in six wide-band interference filters; the Narrowband Filter Imager (NFI) which is a tunable Lyot-type birefringent filter capable of producing
magnetogram
and
dopplergram
images of the solar surface; and the Spectropolarimeter (SP) which produces the most sensitive
vector magnetograph
maps of the photosphere to date.
The FPP also includes a Correlation Tracker (CT) which locks onto
solar granulation
to stabilize the SOT images to a fraction of an
arcsecond
. The spatial resolution of the SOT is a factor of 5 improvement over previous space-based solar telescopes (e.g., the MDI instrument on the
SOHO
).
XRT (X-ray Telescope)
[
edit
]
A modified Wolter I telescope design that uses grazing incidence optics to image the
solar corona
's hottest components (0.5 to 10 Million K) with an angular resolution consistent with 1 arcsec pixels at the CCD. The telescope has an imaging field of view of 34 arcminutes. It is capable of capturing an image of the full sun when pointed at the center of the solar disk. The telescope was designed and built by
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
(SAO), which, with the Harvard College Observatory (HCO) form the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). The camera was developed by
NAOJ
and
JAXA
.
EIS (Extreme-Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer)
[
edit
]
A normal incidence extreme ultraviolet (EUV)
spectrometer
that obtains spatially resolved spectra in two wavelength bands: 17.0?21.2 and 24.6?29.2 nm.
[6]
Spatial resolution is around 2 arcsec, and the field of view is up to 560 x 512 arcsec
2
. The emission lines in the EIS wavelength bands are emitted at temperatures ranging from 50,000 K to 20 million K. EIS is used to identify the physical processes involved in heating the
solar corona
.
See also
[
edit
]
- Sunrise
? balloon-borne solar telescope
- SOLAR-C
? planned follow-up to Hinode
References
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
SOLAR-B
.
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- Italics
indicates projects in development.
- Symbol
†
indicates failed projects.
Strikethrough lines
indicate cancelled projects.
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National space agencies
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Joint development partners
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January
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February
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March
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April
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May
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June
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July
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- STS-121
(
MPLM
)
- INSAT-4C
- Genesis I
- Kosmos 2422
- BelKA
,
Baumanets
,
PicPot
,
SACRED
,
ION
,
Rincon 1
,
ICECube-1
,
KUTESat Pathfinder
,
SEEDS
,
nCube
,
HAUSAT-1
,
MEROPE
,
CP-2
,
AeroCube-1
,
CP-1
,
Mea Huaka'i
,
ICECube-2
- Arirang-2
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August
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September
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October
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November
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December
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- Fengyun 2-05
- WildBlue 1
,
AMC-18
- STS-116
(
ITS P5
,
SpaceHab LSM
,
ANDE-MAA
,
ANDE-FACL
,
RAFT1
,
MARScom
,
MEPSI-2
)
- MEASAT-3
- USA-193
- TacSat-2
,
GeneSat
- Kiku 8
- SAR-Lupe 1
- Meridian 1
- Kosmos 2424
,
Kosmos 2425
,
Kosmos 2426
- CoRoT
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Launches are separated by dots ( ? ), payloads by commas ( , ), multiple names for the same satellite by slashes ( / ).
Crewed flights
are underlined. Launch failures are marked with the † sign. Payloads deployed from other spacecraft are (enclosed in parentheses).
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Past
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Planned
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Proposed
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Cancelled
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Lost
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Sun-Earth
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Operating
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Planned
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Proposed
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Retired
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Hibernating
(Mission completed)
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Lost/Failed
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Cancelled
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Related
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