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WHAT IS HINODE?
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Come With Us as We Make a
Journey to the Surface of the Sun !
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Hinode's three year mission is to explore the magnetic fields of the Sun, resulting in an improved understanding of the mechanisms that power the solar atmosphere and drive solar eruptions.
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Click on the image below for an mpeg movie that zooms in on the sunspots at the
center of the solar disk. (If using Quicktime, use v. 6.) The animation is courtesy of the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo. To see how the animation was made, click HERE.
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The Sun presents many
faces to us, but these are veiled by the Earth's atmosphere.
In visible light, detail is washed out by the contributions from
different spectral lines and the lack of spatial resolution. In the
animation, we zoom in on a small sunspot group and select a restricted
portion of the spectrum, called the continuum, where there are no spectral lines.
As we close in, we see a granulation pattern -- the top
of convection cells that bring thermal energy (heat) from the
interior of the Sun. These convection cells form at a depth of
about one third of the way to the center of the Sun.
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Solar-B, now named Hinode (Sunrise), was successfully launched from Japan's Uchinoura Space Center on Friday, September 22 at 4:36 p.m. CDT (September 23, 6:36a.m. Japanese Standard Time). Click HERE for RealVideo or HERE for Windows Media. (Video courtesy of JAXA -- download time may be a minute or two.
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The Hinode mission is a follow-on to the highly successful Japan/US/UK Yohkoh (Solar-A) satellite which operated between 1991 and 2001. Led by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Space Science Research Division (formerly the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS)), Hinode consists of a coordinated set of optical, EUV, and X-ray instruments that will 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. This information will tell us much about how the Sun generates magnetic disturbances and high-energy particle storms that propagate from the Sun to the Earth and beyond; in this sense, Hinode will help us predict "space weather."
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Click above, on this artist's concept of Hinode for animation of the deployment of the spacecraft (Quicktime, 2.7M, or click HERE for a 2.5M mpg movie or HERE for a 2.5M avi movie.)
The image is
courtesy of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the animation was provided by Goddard Space Flight Center.
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+ BACK to HINODE HOME
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PARTNERS:
+ Link to Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS, now JAXA)
+ Link to Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC)
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