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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M. Otsubo is a former NAOJ staff scientist.
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Tsuneta, S., Ichimoto, K., Katsukawa, Y. et al. The Solar Optical Telescope for the Hinode Mission: An Overview. Sol Phys 249, 167–196 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-008-9174-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-008-9174-z