Solar B (Hinode)

Solar B [ISAS]

The Solar-B mission consists of a coordinated set of optical, X-ray and EUV telescopes. The optical telescope is a diffraction limited, aplanatic Gregorian with an aperture of 0.5 m. It provides angular resolution of about 0.2 arcsec over the field of view of about 400 × 400 arcsec. The focal plane package of the optical telescope consists of a filter vector magnetograph and a spectro-polarimeter. This combination allows us to obtain, for the first time, a continuous series of high-precision vector magnetograms, Dopplergrams, and filtergrams with sub-arcsec resolution.

The X-ray telescope images the high temperature (0.5 to 10 MK) corona with improved angular resolution, say approximately 1 arcsec, a few times better than Yohkoh's soft X-ray telescope. The Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Imaging Spectrometer aims to determine velocity fields and other plasma parameters in the corona and transition region, thus helping to relate coronal dynamic behavior, observed with the X-ray telescope, to the underlying photospheric magnetic field, observed with the optical telescope. The EUV-imaging spectrometer is also expected to unveil inflow and outflow of magnetic reconnection, and hence together with the two other telescopes, to finally solve long-standing controversies on coronal heating and dynamics.

After the successful launch, Solar B has been renamed Hinode ("Sunrise").