Preface: A Topical Issue on the Hinode Mission

Abstract

The Solar-B satellite was launched in the morning of 23 September 2006 (06:36 Japan time) by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS/JAXA), and was renamed to Hinode (“sunrise” in Japanese). Hinode carries three instruments; the X-ray telescope (XRT), the EUV imaging spectrometer (EIS), and the solar optical telescope (SOT). These instruments were developed by ISAS/JAXA in cooperation with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan as domestic partner and NASA (USA) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (UK) as international partners. ESA and the Norwegian Space Center have been providing a downlink station. All the data taken with Hinode have been open to everyone since May 2007. The first set of instrumental papers of the Hinode mission, introducing the mission overview, EIS, XRT, and the database system, was published in Volume 243, Number 1 (June 2007). This issue contains four papers on SOT and one paper on XRT. Another SOT paper cited as Tarbell et al. (2008) in these papers will appear later in this journal.