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Journal ArticleDOI

The Solar Optical Telescope for the Hinode Mission: An Overview

TLDR
The solar optical telescope (SOT) as discussed by the authors is a 50-cm diffraction-limited Gregorian telescope with the Stokes Spectro-Polarimeter (SP) attached to it.
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.

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Journal ArticleDOI

Alfvénic waves with sufficient energy to power the quiet solar corona and fast solar wind

TL;DR: Observations of the transition region of the chromosphere and the corona are reported that reveal how Alfvénic motions permeate the dynamic and finely structured outer solar atmosphere.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) Vector Magnetic Field Pipeline: Overview and Performance

TL;DR: In this article, the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) active region patches (HARPs) are used to track the location and shape of magnetic regions throughout their lifetime.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Origins of Hot Plasma in the Solar Corona

TL;DR: Observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory and the Hinode solar physics mission are used to reveal a ubiquitous coronal mass supply in which chromospheric plasma in fountainlike jets or spicules is accelerated upward into the corona, with much of the plasma heated to temperatures between ~0.02 and 0.1 million kelvin.
Journal ArticleDOI

Physics of Solar Prominences: I-Spectral Diagnostics and Non-LTE Modelling

TL;DR: In this paper, the spectral inversion technique has been used to infer the plasma parameters important for the general properties of the prominence plasma in both its cool core and the hotter prominence-corona transition region.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Nanoflares and the solar X-ray corona

TL;DR: In this paper, it was shown that the X-ray corona is created by the dissipation at the many tangential discontinuities arising spontaneously in the bipolar fields of the active regions of the sun as a consequence of random continuous motion of the footpoints of the field in the photospheric convection.
Journal ArticleDOI

Mass and Energy Flow in the Solar Chromosphere and Corona

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review some investigations into the mass and energy flow in the solar chromosphere and corona; the objective of these investigations is the development of a physical model that will not only account for the physical conditions in the outer atmosphere of the sun, but can also be applied to the study of the outer atmospheres of other stars.
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