.
View of the Sun
processed by scientists at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C.
(Source: YouTube / NASAGoddard):
https://tinyurl.com/y53f7cxe
December 2, 2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO - a joint mission of the European Space Agency and NASA. Since its launch, the mission has kept watch on the Sun. The Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C. manages SOHO's LASCO instrument, to merge views from two of LASCO’s coronagraphs: C2, which images closer to the Sun’s surface but has a smaller field of view, and C3, which has a wider field of view. New science came out of LASCO’s ability to image giant eruptions of solar material and magnetic fields, known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. Throughout the video, the Sun releases fast-moving CMEs that can trigger space weather effects on Earth - like auroras, communications problems,and even power outages - and for spacecraft in their path. These storms are more frequent near solar maximum, the period approximately every 11 years when the Sun’s activity is at a high point. The bright, horizontally elongated objects that pass through the field of view are planets, which can be so bright that they saturate pixels along the same row.
3 12 2020: 13 191 views
.
