2021年10月14日，"羲和号"卫星发射成功，拉开了我国空间探日的序幕。经过一系列在轨调试，自2022年8月4日起，"羲和号"对日观测达到最佳状态，科学数据通过南京大学太阳科学数据中心（SSDC-NJU, https://ssdc.nju.edu.cn）对外发布。目前，国内外太阳物理工作者正在积极开展基于"羲和号"高质量科学数据的相关研究。近期，具有重要国际影响力的《天体物理学杂志快报》（The Astrophysical Journal Letters）正式刊出"羲和号"热点专辑（Focus Issue）：Focus on Early Results from the Chinese Hα Solar Explorer (CHASE) Mission （https://iopscience.iop.org/collections/Focus-on-Early-Results-from-CHASE）。这是中国天文观测设备首次在ApJ系列刊物上以热点专辑形式发表研究成果。
该专辑将收录发表于《天体物理学杂志》和《天体物理学杂志快报》中的"羲和号"首批约十篇研究论文（投稿日期截止2023年12月31日）。
Focus on Early Results from the Chinese Hα Solar Explorer (CHASE) Mission
As the first solar space mission of China, the Chinese Hα Solar Explorer (CHASE), also dubbed "Xihe", Goddess of the Sun in Chinese legends, was successfully launched on October 14, 2021. After great efforts of in-orbit experimental operation, the performance of the satellite has been excellent and met the pre-launch expectations since August 4 2022. The full-Sun raster scanning takes 46 seconds, with a spectral sampling of 0.024 Å and a spatial resolution of 1.2 arcsec. From the two-dimensional spectra of each scanning, we can reconstruct more than three hundred monochromatic images at different wavelengths across the observed wavebands, whose emissions are from different layers from the lower photosphere to the upper chromosphere. The Level 1 science data are available to the community through the Solar Science Data Centre of Nanjing University (SSDC-NJU, https://ssdc.nju.edu.cn).
A Focus Issue on the early results of CHASE mission is published at the website of <The Astrophysical Journal Letters> (https://iopscience.iop.org/collections/Focus-on-Early-Results-from-CHASE). The Focus Issue will collect ~10 papers, submitted until the end of 2023, which cover a broad range of topics, including spectroscopic observation of solar white-light flares, propagation of Moreton waves, formation and eruption of solar filaments, origin of solar wind from coronal holes or active regions, modelling of solar eruptions matching observations, and Sun-as-a-star spectroscopic diagnostics of eruptive phenomena. We hope China's first step into the space solar physics will bring some new insights, which may help to unveil the mysteries of the Sun, our Star.