Solar - B (Hinode) was launched successfully on 22nd September 2006 from the Uchinoura Space Centre in southern Japan.
It is traditional for the Japanese to rename their satellites after they have successfully completed one orbit of the Earth. So the satellite is now called ‘Hinode’ and pronounced ‘hi-NOH-day’ which means ‘sunrise’ in Japanese.
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Scientists from the UK (led by Prof. Louise Harra) are involved in the Hinode mission, which is providing unprecedented detail of the Sun’s activity. The Hinode mission has been designed and built by teams in the UK, USA, Europe and Japan.
Hinode is being used to study the interaction between the Sun's magnetic field and its corona, which should aid our understanding of the causes of solar activity.
Find out more on Louise in our Solar Guides section |
Hinode will also be used to study solar flares – huge explosions on the Sun. High energy particles, such as protons, shoot out from solar flares and can arrive at Earth within tens of minutes, to be followed a few days later by coronal mass ejections. These huge bubbles of gas and their associated magnetic fields can cause major magnetic disturbances on Earth, sometimes with catastrophic results. Scientists will use Hinode to investigate the so-called trigger phase of these events.
Here is one of the very first images taken by the Hinode of the X-ray emission from the Sun.
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