Hinode Align: A Python Routine for Aligning Hinode Datasets

Slit Scanning Spectrographs offer unparalleled spatial and spectral sampling and are some of the most common instruments on current and next generation solar observatories. Hinode/SP, despite approaching almost 2 decades old, still offers some of the most stable and highest resolution spectropolarimetric observations of the Solar Photosphere. Because observations by scanning spectrograph are collected one slit at a time, they observe a non-uniform grid of points in space and time. Aligning these datasets precisely is difficult but important for many applications. 

In the project we wrote this code for, we plan to mesh Hinode/SP magnetograms into lower-resolution HMI magnetic fields to be used as a boundary condition for a global MHD Coronal simulation. In order to avoid edge effects between the data sources, the Hinode data needs to be well aligned. Therefore, we’ve created a code to align Hinode magnetograms with HMI magnetograms to the accuracy of Hinode pixel resolution. 

Check out the code on github here and feel free to reach out with any questions.