The Solar Optical Telescope for the Hinode Mission: An Overview
Abstract
The Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) aboard the Hinode satellite (formerly called Solar-B) consists of the Optical Telescope Assembly (OTA) and the Focal Plane Package (FPP). The OTA is a 50-cm diffraction-limited Gregorian telescope, and the FPP includes the narrowband filtergraph (NFI) and the broadband filtergraph (BFI), plus the Stokes Spectro-Polarimeter (SP). The SOT provides unprecedented high-resolution photometric and vector magnetic images of the photosphere and chromosphere with a very stable point spread function and is equipped with an image-stabilization system with performance better than 0.01 arcsec rms. Together with the other two instruments on Hinode (the X-Ray Telescope (XRT) and the EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS)), the SOT is poised to address many fundamental questions about solar magnetohydrodynamics. This paper provides an overview; the details of the instrument are presented in a series of companion papers.
- Publication:
-
Solar Physics
- Pub Date:
- June 2008
- DOI:
- 10.1007/s11207-008-9174-z
- arXiv:
- arXiv:0711.1715
- Bibcode:
- 2008SoPh..249..167T
- Keywords:
-
- Solar-B;
- Hinode;
- Sun: magnetic fields;
- Sun: photosphere;
- Sun: chromosphere;
- Sun: MHD;
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- doi:10.1007/s11207-008-9174-z