Hinode (/ˈhiːnoʊdeɪ/;Japanese:ひので,IPA:[çinode], Sunrise), formerlySolar-B, is aJapan Aerospace Exploration AgencySolar mission withUnited States andUnited Kingdom collaboration. It is the follow-up to theYohkoh (Solar-A) mission and it was launched on the final flight of theM-V rocket fromUchinoura Space Center,Japan on 22 September 2006 at 21:36UTC (23 September, 06:36JST). Its initial orbit was perigee height 280 km (170 mi), apogee height 686 km (426 mi), inclination 98.3 degrees, after which the satellite maneuvered to the quasi-circularSun-synchronous orbit over the day/nightterminator, 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 theNorwegian, terrestrialSvalsat station, operated byKongsberg a few kilometres west ofLongyearbyen,Svalbard. From there, data is transmitted byTelenor through a fibre-opticnetwork to mainland Norway atHarstad, and on to data users in North America, Europe and Japan.
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), andx-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 theUK.[5]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.[6]
As of March 2024[update], the operation is planned to continue until 2033.[7]
A 0.5 meter Gregorianoptical telescope with anangular resolution of about 0.2arcsecond over thefield of view of about 400 x 400 arcsec. At the SOTfocal plane, the Focal Plane Package (FPP) built by theLockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory inPalo 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 producingmagnetogram anddopplergram images of the solar surface; and the Spectropolarimeter (SP) which produces the most sensitivevector magnetograph maps of the photosphere to date.
The FPP also includes a Correlation Tracker (CT) which locks ontosolar granulation to stabilize the SOT images to a fraction of anarcsecond. The spatial resolution of the SOT is a factor of 5 improvement over previous space-based solar telescopes (e.g., the MDI instrument on theSOHO).
A modified Wolter I telescope design that uses grazing incidence optics to image thesolar 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 bySmithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), which, with the Harvard College Observatory (HCO) form the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). The camera was developed byNAOJ andJAXA.
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.[8] Spatial resolution is around 2 arcsec, and the field of view is up to 560 x 512 arcsec2. 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 thesolar corona.
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).
