XRT News: Highlighted monthly XRT science papers. A PDF summary of the highlights is available.

"Field Topology Analysis of a Long-lasting Coronal Sigmoid"
Savcheva, van Ballegooijen & DeLuca 2012, ApJ, 744, 78

"Sigmoidal Active Region on the Sun: Comparison of a Magnetohydrodynamical Simulation and a Non-Linear Force-Free Field Model"
Savcheva, Pariat, van Ballegooijen, Aulanier, & DeLuca 2012, ApJ, in press.

2012 Mar 7:

XPOW: Three X-Flares in Two Days from AR 11429

2012 Mar:

EIS Nugget: Interaction beteen EIT wave and upflow region

2012 Feb 21:

Conference Announcement: The Hinode 6th Science Meeting will be held in St. Andrews, Scotland, on August 13--17, 2012. The deadline for abstract submission is 30 June 2012. The deadline for registration is 30 June 2012.

2012 Feb 10:

XPOW: Supra-Arcade Downflows Post X-Flare (2012/01/27)

2012 Feb 7:

XRT News: XRT makes it to NASA Image of the Day! -- Hinode/XRT caught a large flare on the limb of the Sun, and one of our images was featured as the NASA Image of the Day for 2012-February-7.

2012 Feb 6:

XRT News: Highlighted monthly XRT science papers. A PDF summary of the highlights is available.

"Thermal Properties of a Solar Coronal Cavity Observed with the X-Ray Telescope on Hinode"
Reeves et. al 2012, ApJ, 746, 146

"Clear Detection of Chromospheric Evaporation Upflows with High Spatial/Temporal Resolution by Hinode XRT"
Nitta et. al 2011, Solar Phys., 276, 183

"Lateral Offset of the Coronal Mass Ejections from the X-flare of 2006 December 13 and Its Two Precursor Eruptions"
Sterling et. al 2011, ApJ, 743, 63

2012 Feb:

EIS Nugget: The EIS flare catalogue 1 year anniversary

2012 Jan 25:

XPOW: Highly Flare Productive AR Complex - 2012/01/22 Synoptic

2012 Jan 21:

SOT POD: Active regions: During the autumn of 2011, several regions of magnetic activity cropped up on the Sun. Hinode SOT observed in them as they crossed the solar disk. Shown here is a sampling of observations of NOAA regions numbered from 11243 to 11302. Solar Cycle 24 roared off to a late start.

2012 Jan 18:

XPOW: Can you spot Comet Lovejoy?

2012 Jan 16:

SOT POD: Comet Lovejoy: The Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on Hinode ran a special observing program to take images of Comet Lovejoy as it approached the Sun early on 16 December 2011. The comet is visible in 2 images taken 30 seconds apart, before it vanished in the glare of scattered light from the solar disk. When visible, the peak surface brightness of the comet nucleus was about 100 times fainter than the solar surface just inside the limb (edge) of the Sun. SOT was designed to look directly at the bright solar surface in visible light, and it is not safe to point the telescope off the limb. Therefore the long-exposure SOT images, in which the comet is visible, are severly saturated on the disk and show scattered light brighter than the comet above the surface. Scattered light has been carefully subtracted in the images described below, and a short-exposure image of the Sun's surface taken at the same time has been inserted to replace the overexposed disk. All of these images are taken in yellow light, near the Sodium D line at 589.6 nm. The long exposures are 1.02 seconds, the short are 0.30 seconds (normal exposures for observing the magnetic fields on the Sun are 0.1 or 0.2 seconds). All have pixel sizes of 0.16 arcseconds or about 115 km at the Sun; the resolution of the SOT in this mode is about 2 pixels or 230 km at the Sun.

The image at 00:05:12 UT (hinode_sot_comet_20111216_000512.jpg) shows the comet just entering the SOT field of view. It is 1728x1024 pixels or 200,000 x 120,000 km in size. The comet has been increased in brightness by about a factor of 200, to make it easily visible along with the disk of the Sun. The image at 00:05:42 UT (hinode_sot_comet_20111216_000542.jpg) is the same size. The comet has been increased in brightness by about a factor of 250. The comet only images (hinode_sot_comet_only_20111216_000512.jpg and hinode_sot_comet_only_20111216_000542.jpg) show just the comet at each of the above times, at the original signal level measured by the camera (after scattered light subtraction). The images are 128x128 pixels or 15,000 km square. In the earlier image, the coma, the glowing cloud surrounding the nuclues, is resolved in size at about 700 km diameter and nearly round, and only a faint tail is visible; peak brightness is about 40 DN. In the later image, the coma is about the same size, fainter with peak brightness of 20 DN. A long (~2500 km) somewhat irregular tail is clearly visible. In the 30 seconds between these 2 images, the comet traveled ~130 pixels or 15,000 km on the plane of the sky. This means that during each 1-second exposure, the comet moved about 500 km or 4.3 pixels; this causes some elongation of the image of the coma and tail in the direction of motion.

(Note: the thumbnail image is from 12/16/2011 at 00:05:42 UT. Additional images are available here.)

2012 Jan 16:

SOT POD: Complex Active Region 11363: NOAA Active Region 11363 crossed the solar disk in early December 2011. It was one of the largest regions to appear to date in the current solar cycle. The region was characterized by two large sunspots, leading and trailing, with several smaller pores in between. In spite of its size and complexity, 11363 produced very few flare events. The image shows the region in Calcium H on December 6, 2011 at 10:01:31 UT.

2012 Jan 16:

SOT POD: Long limb prominence: SOT caught the southern-most end of a long prominence on the limb of the sun November 22, 2011. This image is actually a difference of two Hydrogen alpha images, one taken near line center and the other in the blue wing of the spectral line. The images were taken 5 seconds apart at 03:11:51 UT and 03:11:46 UT.

2012 Jan:

EIS Nugget: Spectroscopic Precursor to a CME

NASA Contact: Adam Kobelski
Page Last Updated: Tuesday, 04 April 2017