[Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS)] Eclipse on 9 March 2016: public release of images and videos taken by the "Hinode" satellite

March 10, 2016
Institute of Space and Astronautical Science / Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS/JAXA)
Naional Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ/NINS), and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), release partial eclipse images and videos taken on March 9 with the solar observation satellite “Hinode”.

The images and videos were taken on March 9, 2016 at 9:08 JST with the X-Ray Telescope (XRT) aboard “Hinode” during its flight above the Indonesian sky at an altitude of 680km. In the images and videos, the dark new moon appeared from the south west (the lower right side of the image) and passed across the solar disk toward the north of the sun which is seen shining in X-rays. Most of the sun as seen from “Hinode” was hidden (a maximum of 97.8% of the solar diameter), which was still a partial eclipse albeit very close to entering the total eclipse zone. Since the flight speed of “Hinode” is very fast (27,000 km per hour), the duration of the partial eclipse was only about 15 minutes.

During this period, international joint observations were performed between “Hinode” and ground-based observation teams in Indonesia. In addition to the X-ray observations, observations of ultraviolet emission lines emanating from the corona were conducted by the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS). These data are scheduled to be used to investigate the relationship between the coronal structures seen in visible light during the total solar eclipse and X-ray jets, and to study the physical state of the hot coronal material.

The X-ray solar images and videos can be downloaded from below.

Solar eclipse captured by “Hinode”

• The solar eclipse videos taken with the X-Ray Telescope
  Format: MPEG4(H.264) 1Mbps, image size: 1024×1024
  File size: about 10MB each. The response may become slow in case of many accesses at the same time.
• The solar eclipse images taken with the X-Ray Telescope
  Left: the images with color, right: black and white images
  Click to enlarge.
• BMP-format image files for the videos
  Zip-compressed files including the BMP images which were used to make the videos. The size of each image is 1024×1024. The last 6 digits number in the name of each bmp file gives Universal Time when the image was taken. Time intervals may not be equal because of telemetry drop-off.

  The images in these files are original and no higher resolution versions are available.

About Hinode

Hinode is a Japanese mission developed and launched by ISAS/JAXA, with NAOJ as domestic partner and NASA and STFC (UK) as international partners. It is operated by these agencies in co-operation with ESA and NSC (Norway).

Past eclipse observations (in Japanese)