The Best Coronal Mass Ejection Images in 2002: A Retrospective (March 6, 2003)
Hi-resolution images:
2002/01/14 (TIF,1.5M),
2002/07/19 (TIF,1.6M)
2002/08/24 (TIF,1.6M),
2002/12/02 (TIF,1.4M)
Movies:
MPEG Movie (1.8M), smaller version (543K)
Quicktime Movie (928K), smaller version (341K)
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Over the year, although we are on the downward slope after having
passed the peak of solar activity, solar storms (either solar flares
or coronal mass ejections) occur on the Sun almost every day. Most
of these are considered rather minor. But strong, visually stunning
blasts still occur fairly frequently. Here is a retrospective of
nine images from storms taken by the LASCO C2 instrument. Most of
these images have never been highlighted before, but, grouped
together in this series, one can appreciate the variety, size, and
power of these blasts. In all instances with this instrument the Sun
is more than blocked out by an occulting disk so that the instrument
can see activity in the corona, which is 100 times less bright than
the Sun, and perhaps a million times less bright than the Sun when
observed from near Earth (where SOHO is).
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. |
