New XRT paper: The coalignment paper, "Calibration of Hinode/XRT for Coalignment" by Keiji Yoshimura and David McKenzie was published in Solar Physics. This paper presents the calibration procedures, database, and implementing software for aligning XRT images with other solar datasets. The new methods described in the paper will be useful tools for the coalignment and calibration between other instruments.

The coalignment webpage has also been updated recently. Those interested in learning how to use the coalignment software can visit their website.

2015 Nov 3:

XPOW: AR12431 Photobombs AR12434

2015 Oct 27:

XPOW: The Faces of Grieving Ghosts

2015 Oct 20:

XPOW: Radiant Boundary

2015 Oct 13:

XPOW: How Many Cusps Do You See?

2015 Oct 6:

XPOW: The Sunset of AR12422

2015 Oct 1:

SOT POD: M5.2 Flare

2015 Sep 29:

XPOW: A Solar Prominence with a Chewy Nougat

2015 Sep 29:

Big News: XRT straylight increase in June 2015. Fans of XRT may have noticed that the most recent images have a somewhat different appearance, starting on 14-June-2015. The cause is a change in the amount of visible light that is being transmitted to the detector, most likely due to a pinhole in one of the prefilters at the entrance aperture. Because of the differing characteristics of our various focal-plane filters, the increased visible light only affects a few of the passbands. In particular, the Ti-poly and C-poly images are strongly affected, as are the G-band (visible light) images. There is a measurable effect in Al-mesh and Al-poly, but it's very small and should be correctable.

Since the Beryllium images and the thicker Aluminum images are all unaffected, and the Al-poly and Al-mesh images are correctable, XRT still retains the ability to make images in a full range of temperatures, and to distinguish plasmas of different temperatures via all the standard analysis techniques.

Immediate recommendations for users: C-poly, Ti-poly, and G-band images after 14-June should not be used for quantitative analysis, although they might be useful as context images. The XRT Team will be eliminating the C-poly and Ti-poly filters from all future observation programs. G-band images are still useful for calibration purposes and should be considered to be "engineering data". The Al-mesh and Al-poly images are marginally affected, and may be used with care. Their largest component is estimated to be at the ~10 DN/s level, so the effect is negligible for active regions, but more important for dark features. The thicker filters are not significantly affected and may be used as before.

Future calibration: The XRT Team has been working on quantitative analysis for the calibration of Al-mesh and Al-poly. We currently anticipate that the effects of this straylight will be best handled by increasing the pixel errors estimated by xrt_prep.pro (the Level-1 reformatter) for Al-mesh and Al-poly In addition, the XRT Team is investigating the consequences to the temperature response functions, and will provide guidance on that subject. New calibrations and software will be announced here and documented in the XRT Analysis Guide.

2015 Sep 25:

SOT POD: Activity on the Solar Limb

2015 Sep 22:

XPOW: Happy 9th Anniversary Hinode

2015 Sep 15:

XPOW: Two Eclipses for the Price of One

2015 Sep 8:

XPOW: The First 3D QSL Map of an Erupting Sigmoid

2015 Sep 1:

SOT POD: AR 12403's Many Faces

2015 Sep 1:

XPOW: Sigmoid Evolution

2015 Aug 26:

SOT POD: A Flare With Some Flair

2015 Aug 25:

Hinode/IRIS Press Release: Visit NASA's Release and JAXA's Release to read how magnetically driven resonance helps heat the Sun's atmosphere!

2015 Aug 25:

XPOW: Trans-Solar Highway

2015 Aug 19:

XPOW: The Water Fountain Jet

2015 Aug 11:

XPOW: The Sun in Focus (Mode)

2015 Aug 06:

SOT POD: Double Feature

2015 Aug 04:

XPOW: XRT Flare Imaging History

2015 Aug:

EIS Nugget: Relative Abundance Measurements in Plumes and Interplumes

2015 July 28:

XPOW: Full Disk Focus Mode

2015 July 21:

XPOW: Overlapogram

2015 Jul 14:

SOT POD: A Sunspot-Set

2015 July 14:

XPOW: The West Limb

2015 Jul 10:

SOT POD: Active Region 12381 Continues its Activity

2015 Jul 09:

SOT POD: Corona and Chromosphere: A Heated Complement

2015 Jul 08:

SOT POD: Active Region 12381

2015 July 08:

XRT Press Release: Searing Sun Seen in X-rays -- Visit NASA or The Royal Astronomical Society to read about an observation campaign that combined Hinode XRT images with high-energy X-rays from the NuSTAR satellite.

2015 July 06:

XPOW: A Solar Facelift

2015 July 02:

Big News! Hinode gets excellent ratings in 2015 NASA Senior Review. -- The Hinode team has received the results from the NASA Senior Review panel for the heliophysics missions. Our science, as well as our role in the NASA heliophysics fleet, were highly regarded in their report. (Science value was "excellent", "future contributions promise to be compelling".) The budget recommendations were also about as good as could be hoped for. The XRT community is well-positioned to move forward with another two years of discovery and science!

2015 Jul 01:

SOT POD: The Solar Limb- June 30th 2015

2015 Jul:

EIS Nugget: Atmospheric Response of an Active Region to new Small Flux Emergence

2015 June 30:

XPOW: A Long, Bright Flare

2015 Jun 26:

SOT POD: Large M7.9 Flare in Active Region 2371

2015 Jun 25:

SOT POD: Plasma lifts off from Active Region 2371

2015 Jun 24:

SOT POD: M6.5 Flare in Active Region 2371

2015 June 23:

XPOW: Four Active Regions

2015 June 16:

XPOW: Swept Away

2015 June 08:

XPOW: Expanding Boundaries

2015 June 02:

XPOW: Looking Through the Atmosphere

2015 May 26:

XPOW: A Sympathetic Flare

2015 May 19:

Big News! Hinode Scientist Patrick McCauley was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship. -- Patrick will begin a Ph.D. in solar physics at the University of Sydney next year. Congratulations from the Hinode/XRT Team Patrick! We will miss you but look forward to calling you Dr. McCauley.

2015 May 19:

XPOW: A Little Squirt

2015 May 12:

XPOW: Three Years in the Life of XRT

2015 May 05:

XPOW: Prominence Eruption

2015 Apr 30:

SOT POD: Events of October 20, 2014

2015 Apr 28:

XPOW: Bright Loops and Dark Loops

2015 Apr 21:

XPOW: The Transit of AR12320

2015 Apr 14:

XPOW: Small Flare in AR12320

2015 Apr 07:

XPOW: X2.1 Flare

2015 Apr:

EIS Nugget: The discovery of dark jets in the solar atmosphere

2015 Mar 31:

XPOW: XRT Phone Wallpaper

2015 Mar 24:

XPOW: Solar Eclipse

2015 Mar 23:

SOT POD: NOAA AR 12177 Ca II H and CH

2015 Mar 23:

SOT POD: AR 12192 CN 3883

2015 Mar 17:

XPOW: Flare Cusp in 8 Filters

2015 Mar 10:

XPOW: Vorticity Amid Flaring Loops

2015 Mar 03:

XPOW: Colorful Corona

2015 Feb 24:

SOT POD: AR 12277 Wide SP Map

2015 Feb 24:

XPOW: Active Region Moss

2015 Feb 17:

XPOW: XRT Featured in JAXA's Magazine

2015 Feb:

XRT Coalignment Calibration: The paper, Calibration of Hinode/XRT for Coalignment, detailing XRT's co-alignment database has been submitted to the Solar Physics Journal. The coalignment database allows for quick alignment of XRT images. It is able to correct for spacecraft jitter as well as align XRT with other instruments. The database has been incorporated into XRT's data reduction routines distributed in SolarSoft.

2015 Feb 10:

XPOW: A Crack On The Sun

2015 Feb 3:

XPOW: 6 More Weeks of a Space Winter?

2015 Jan 27:

XPOW: Unusual Linear Feature

2015 Jan 20:

XPOW: M-Flare with Beautiful Coronal Loop Expansion

2015 Jan 13:

XPOW: The Last X-Flare of 2014

2015 Jan 8:

EIS News Article: The Economist -- Where the slow blow goes