A Cross-Comparison of Cotemporal Magnetograms Obtained with MDI/SOHO and SP/Hinode

We compared a set of cotemporal magnetograms of active regions obtained with the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) aboard SOHO and the Spectro-Polarimeter (SP) of the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on board Hinode. The comparison shows that even with the recent calibration of level-1.8 data, the magnetic flux density derived from the MDI data is still lower than that obtained with SP. The average ratio between current version 2008 MDI level-1.8 data and SP magnetograms is 0.71, and is 0.82 for version 2007 MDI level-1.8 data. The comparison also shows that the most recent version 2008 calibration of MDI level-1.8 data has successfully removed the center-to-limb variation, while version 2007 level-1.8 data did not, as estimated by Ulrich et al. (Solar Phys. 255, 53, 2009).