NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and other worldwide telescopes have captured unique images of the sun. The observatory studied the massive star for two years.
NASA, in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA), launched The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (
SOHO) on Dec. 2, 1995, to study the sun for two years. It is churning out incredible images of the sun.
The sun is in its
quietest phase of its 11-year activity cycle called the solar minimum; no sunspots have been observed in more than 200 days. Also, the solar wind has dropped to its lowest levels in 50 years. During this phase, the SOHO and other telescopes and satellites were able to capture the sun’s various moods at various wavelengths.
Here are some pictures from SOHO and other telescopes:
NASA A sweeping prominence, a huge cloud of relatively cool dense plasma is seen suspended in the Sun's hot, thin corona. At times, promineces can erupt, escaping the Sun's atmosphere. Emission in this spectral line shows the upper chromosphere at a temperature of about 60,000 degrees K (over 100,000 degrees F). Every feature in the image traces magnetic field structure. The hottest areas appear almost white, while the darker red areas indicate cooler temperatures. (Courtesy of SOHO/EIT consortium)
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Nasa.gov The image shows the corona for a moderately active Sun, with some (red) hot active regions in both hemispheres, surrounded by the (blue/green) cooler plasma of the quiet-Sun corona. Notice also the north polar-crown filament, the trans-equatorial loops, and the coronal hole in the south-east (lower-right) corner of the image and the smaller one over the north pole.
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Nasa.gov A view of an irregular-shaped sunspot and granules on the Sun's surface, seen on August 22, 2003. (Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST) operated by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Oddbjorn Engvold, Jun Elin Wiik, Luc Rouppe van der Voort, Oslo)
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Nasa.gov This LASCO C2 image, taken 8 January 2002, shows a widely spreading coronal mass ejection (CME) as it blasts more than a billion tons of matter out into space at millions of kilometers per hour. The C2 image was turned 90 degrees so that the blast seems to be pointing down. An EIT 304 Angstrom image from a different day was enlarged and superimposed on the C2 image so that it filled the occulting disk for effect (Courtesy of SOHO/LASCO consortium)
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NASA unveils incredible pictures of the sun
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