Big Pic: The Sun Like You've Never Seen It Before
Colorized Coronal Mass Ejections from the Sun Courtesy of SOHO consortium. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA Scientists colorized this image to show the intensity of coronal mass ejections. In this image, the sun reaches out into space with long, super-intense flares of magnetized plasma called coronal mass ejections. When they're directed toward Earth, such ejections may trigger auroras. Especially powerful ejections interrupt power supply and communications on Earth. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a joint project between the European Space Agency and NASA, originally took this photo in 2002. Scientists recently colorized it to show the intensities of the ejections. The white regions in the image are the most intense, while the red regions are of medium intensity and the blue regions are the least intense. The solid blue disc shown around the sun helps block direct sunlight so that details in the corona are more...