Partial Eclipse

2007 February 17

Hinode saw the passage of the Moon on February 17 from its orbit, which was not observed from the ground. Southern part of the Sun was obscured by the northern part of the Moon.

Shadow of Craters on the Moon were found by Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) whose resolution is 0.2 arcsec, or 400m on the Moon. Several craters on the Moon were identified from the image. In principle, image processing allows to determine geography of the Moon with 10 times better accuracy. These data are valuable to be compared with the topography measured with RISE instrument on SELENE mission led by JAXA, which is going to be launched in Summer 2007.

Eclipse data obtained by Hinode will be used to determine scattered light of the telescopes, which are crucial for precise measurement.

[SOT movie]
A) 16:09:24 (UT)
1. Crater Petermann Y
2. Crater Nansen
3. Crater Rozhdestvenskiy W
[High resolution image]
B) 16:10:08 (UT)
3. Crater Rozhdestvenskiy W
4. Caldera of crater Hermite
[High resolution image]
C) 16:10:46 (UT)
5. Caldera of crater Lovelace
6. Caldera of crater Brianchon
[High resolution image]
D) 16:11:27 (UT)
6. Caldera of crater Brianchon
7. Caldera of crater Lindblad
[High resolution image]

Moon Chart near north pole showing approximate location of the limb in this eclipse. Labels A-D corresponds to spans of pictures above. Numbers indicates the location of observed craters. An arrow shows direction of the Earth and Hinode.

From Lunar Polar Chart, NASA (1970)

X-ray Telescope (XRT) observed the Moon as a shadow against bright corona of the Sun.

[XRT movie]
16:09:00 (UT)

[High resolution image]

Editorial supervisor: Dr. Soma at NAOJ

Solar-B Project/NAOJ