Results tagged “SOHO”

Twenty years ago, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory launched into space and revolutionized our study of the sun and a scientific discipline called heliophysics.

It took 10 years to create this image of our changing Sun. Taken from space by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), it shows a dramatically different picture than the one we receive on Earth.

In the early hours of Nov. 27, 2013, Comet ISON entered the field of view of the European Space Agency/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.

A cloud of particles known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME, can be seen bursting up and to the right off the sun (obscured by the center disk) in this image. CMEs are a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of particles into space.

A comet, streaking into the image from the bottom right, appears to be headed for an encounter with a coronal mass ejection (CME) launched from the Sun. In fact, the comet is in the foreground with the CME occurring on the farside of the Sun. The comet, probably just a few tens of metres wide, was vaporised on its approach to the Sun, and did not survive the flyby.

On August 20, 2013 at 4:24 am EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon which can send billions of tons of particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later.

Two coronal mass ejections (CMEs) expand side-by-side from the Sun and out into space in this movie, playing out in front of the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, SOHO, on 1-2 July 2013.

The European Space Agency/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, captured this image of a gigantic coronal hole hovering over the sun's north pole on July 18, 2013, at 9:06 a.m. EDT.