Correction of offset in MDI/SOHO magnetograms

Shutter noise induces a small random shift of the zero point in full-disk magnetograms obtained by the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) instrument aboard SOHO. In this paper, we develop a method to remove this offset by fitting the distribution of the magnetic field strength with a Gaussian function (Ulrich et al., 2002). We also discover a systematic error in the five-minute magnetograms that are the sum of five individual magnetograms computed on-board; this error can be removed together with the offset. The mean solar magnetic field and synoptic frames derived from corrected magnetograms show significant improvement. Standard synoptic charts benefit from reduced noise and elimination of systematic errors in the individual magnetograms. This indicates that this correction is effective and necessary.