Instruments Operation Science Information Miscellaneous
Messages from Scientists
Dear Hinode team,
Congratulations for these so nice images that you showed in the press release. From that data a lot of new science is coming.
Thanks to all the people who have contributed to that wonderful project.
Sincerely,
Dr. Thierry Roudier
Pic du Midi Observatory, France
Dear Solar-B colleagues,
I am delighted to hear of the launch of SOLAR-B. With the high resolution
over such a broad spectrum SOLAR-B will begin looking into a new world.
I expect that we will learn much about the behavior of the individual
magnetic fibrils, whose life style is presently a matter only of conjecture.
Gene Parker
Professor Emeritus, The University of Chicago, USA
Dear Solar-B colleagues,
I wish you and your new baby a happy and successful birth !
SOLAR-B is brilliantly conceived and I look forward with great excitement
to many startling new discoveries from it about our intriguing Sun.
With warm greetings,
Eric Priest
Professor, St Andrews University, UK
Fellow, The Royal Society
Dear Solar-B colleagues,
You have done a tremendous piece of work in designing, building, and testing
Solar-B. I especially congratulate my Japanese colleagues who took on an
almost impossible mission -- but a mission that is vital to advancing the
understanding of the magnetic sun.
Soon the moments of truth (launch, turn-on and testing) will begin. My positive thoughts are being regularly sent your way from Montana. I miss being one of the Solar-B science team. Yohkoh was the crowning experience of my professional and personal life -- better than flying on Spacelab 2 in many ways. I wish all of you good success, many questions answered, and lots of new discoveries.
Cheers,
Loren W. Acton
Professor Emeritus, Montana State University, USA
NASA PI for SXT on Yohkoh
Astronaut
Dear Solar-B colleagues,
We wish you a successful launch and a long life to Solar-B.
A new step in understanding the physics of the Sun is coming
with this wonderful satellite.
Dr. Thierry Roudier
Pic du Midi Observatory, France
Dear Solar-B Team,
I would like to wish you a successful launch of Solar-B and a long and
fruitful operation of the mission. You have worked long and hard to make
this incredibly exciting mission possible, which the whole solar community
has been very eagerly awaiting. I am convinced that it will reveal to us a
totally new Sun and uncover many new phenomena.
Together with the group of young scientists here at the Max Planck Institute of Solar System Research I am very excited by the prospect of working with Solar-B data. We are also eager to support the Solar-B observations with ground-based high resolution imaging and IR spectroscopy observations. I look forward to a long and fruitful collaboration with the Solar-B team.
Lots of success!
Best wishes,
Sami Solanki
Director, Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Germany
Dear Japanese Colleagues and Friends,
After the success of SOLAR-A we are so haapy to see the further advances of SOLAR-B project. We congratulate you on the new development of space solar physics in Japan and wish the great success of SOLAR-B.
The opportunity provided by SOLAR-B will be unique and unprecedented. SOLAR-B will uncover the intrinsic propertines of solar magnetism, and reveal the ultimate cause of atmospheric structuring and heating on the Sun, and lead to a new understanding on the origin of solar activity.
For a long time Japan-China collaboration on solar physics has achieved very high level and made great progress. We have held three successful meetings on solar studies and made very close communications and collaborations.
SOLAR-B will open a new chance for further close collaboration between Japan and China on solar and space science. Chinese colleagues have great enthusiasm to actively joint SOLAR-B studies, including the data analysis, software development, supporting ground-based observation, and observation campaigns.
We are looking forward to the great success of SOLAR-B.
Sincerely yours,
Guoxiang Ai, Professor
Director of National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Science
Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Our dream has come true
The launch of Solar-B fulfills a dream that solar astronomers have had since the dawn of the space age half a century ago. The dream was to study the Sun's surface without the distortion caused by looking through the Earth's turbulent atmosphere.
The first efforts to observe the Sun's surface from above the Earth's atmosphere started in the 1950s with successful balloon flights of 30 cm sized telescopes to high altitudes by French and American astronomers. In the 1970s, astronomers from Japan, Russia and Germany obtained limited but valuable observations from above much of the Earth's atmosphere. Balloon flights for solar research continue today.
But the real dream was to orbit a telescope well above the atmosphere that could study the solar surface in great detail. Plans for such a project were started in the United States in the 1960s and after 25 years of effort in which I participated, NASA cancelled the project. It is amazing that the Sun is the only surface in the solar system that has not been observed from space with resolution better than is provided by small amateur telescopes.
Successful space observations of the Sun's high temperature atmosphere were made from orbit early in the Space Age. Japan added to these observations with the highly successful ASTRO-A (later named HINOTORI) satellite project started in 1974. This success was followed by SOLAR-A (later named YOHKOH) which became a centerpiece of international solar research in the 1990s. It was my honor and pleasure to work with colleagues from all over the world on Yohkoh data in Japan.
After my unsuccessful experience working on a NASA mission to observe the solar surface, the start of the Solar-B project in the early 1990s and the willingness of Japanese scientists to collaborate with international scientists was a welcome promise for the future. I was happy to support NASA participation in the Solar-B project and to join international colleagues in Solar-B science meetings. I am certain that Solar-B will greatly increase our knowledge of the Sun. Our dream has come true.
I join my colleagues at the National Solar Observatory in extending heartiest congratulations and best wishes to everyone who worked so hard to realize the Solar-B satellite project. We look forward to extensive and fruitful collaborations between our ground-based facilities and Solar-B.
Sincerely, Jack Harvey
National Solar Observatory, USA
Best wishes for a successful launch of Solar-B. The satellite, instrument and launch teams all have our highest respect for making this important solar mission a reality. Solar-B takes us to the next level in understanding solar magnetism and the layers of the solar atmosphere it interconnects in complex ways, from photosphere to corona, to produce solar activity and variability. The result from Solar-B, in combination with other space missions and ground-based observatories, will lead to an improved understanding of the mechanisms that power the solar atmosphere and drive solar eruptions. With this information, solar astronomers will begin to understand how the Sun generates magnetic disturbances and high-energy particle storms that propagate from the Sun to the Earth. Solar-B will improve our prediction ability for "space weather", and its impacts on humankind. Solar-B stands as a testimony to the cooperation between nations that the scientific endeavor can foster to accomplish important goals in our quest to understand the workings of the solar-system and the universe we live in.
Stephen L. Keil, Director
National Solar Observatory, USA
What an exciting time to contact all of you!
Memories come to me about the beginning of this great project in the early 90's. Having seen its development and the scientific progress made in this field, it is far clearer than ever that solar-B is the mission we desperately need to produce crucial advances in our understanding of the Sun's magnetism. With the strong emphasis it makes on direct and accurate measurements of the magnetic field, it will mark a turning point in our field as never before.
All the Spanish solar astronomers, the young ones and the not-so-young-anymore ones, are looking forward to exciting and challenging times ahead collaborating with the solar-B team!
Dr. Valentin Martinez Pillet
IAC senior scientist, Spain