XRT observing a solar exlipse. Click the image to watch the movie of this event
or click here for the youtube version.
Eclipse Down Under
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On April 20, 2023, spectators from Indonesia, Australia, the Philippines, and Papua were able to see a total solar eclipse. Although this eclipse wasn't local to North America, Hinode Solar Satellite still was able to capture the phenomena. Hinode orbits the Earth in a sun synchronous, polar orbit allowing scientists to view the sun almost 24/7. In this case, Hinode was able to pass through the shadow that the Moon was making on the Earth. XRT captured the moment of the most Moon-Sun coverage. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon covers the Sun. Sounds simple, but an eclipse requires a certain circumstance. The most important criteria is: the Moon and Sun are aligned. Totality depends on the closeness of the moon at a given time since the Moon's orbit isn't exactly circular. In the XRT movie, there are multiple filters used for different imagery. For the synoptic (full disk and first partial sun) images, we are using thin-Be which looks very similar to the two filters we used for the eclipse observation, Al-poly and Ti-poly. Both sets of filters give a beautiful view of the then current active regions. We are ecstatic since this is the first time viewing an eclipse event through the Al-poly Ti-poly combination. Our space based view of the sun looks different from that of Earth because of the wavelength of light monitored with XRT, X-rays. For instance, we can see the visible part of the corona from the Earth during an eclipse, but using XRT we can observe constantly! This additional attached image is the estimated timing of the event. This prediction lead the XRT team to estimate how to take the images. Additionally, the prediction allowed for determining the center of the image. Hinode instrument EIS (Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer) uses the eclipse time to see the far corona, as far from the sun as possible, to compare to ground telescope attempting the same mission. It's a tradition for XRT instrument to take images so we have a gorgeous record of each event. Keywords: Eclipse, Full Disk Filters: Al-poly, Ti-poly, Thin-Be |
(Prepared by Rhiannon Fleming and Aki Takeda)
The XRT instrument team is comprised of SAO, NASA, JAXA, and NAOJ.
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