Filaments Lift Off (January 25, 2013)

Hi-res TIF (1.2M)

Movies: QT: Large (4.2M), Small (399K), MPEG: Large ( 11M) Small (5.5M), MP4 (2.6M), M4V (766K)

Two long, bright filaments, threaded with magnetic fields, broke away from the Sun as part of coronal mass ejection on January 23, 2013. This first one headed off to the lower left in chunky pieces. The second CME sailed high over the sun's north pole as a long, unraveling strand, followed by waves of plasma. Earth was not in the line of fire of either eruption. In these coronagraph images, the Sun (represented by the white circle) is blocked by the red occulting disk so that the fainter features of the outer corona can be observed.

SOHO began its Weekly Pick some time after sending a weekly image or video clip to the American Museum of Natural History (Rose Center) in New York City. There, the SOHO Weekly Pick is displayed with some annotations on a large plasma display.

If your institution would also like to receive the same Weekly Pick from us for display (usually in Photoshop or QuickTime format), please send your inquiry to steele.hill@gsfc.nasa.gov.