01 March 2010

SOHO image of Jupiter Conjunction

Contd... from previous post on Jupiter Conjunction.

SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) is a spacecraft that was sent to space by NASA and ESA to study the sun. It consists of a lot of instruments like Spectrometers, Coronagraphs and Imaging systems to study the sun.
SOHO continuously sends near- real time data of the sun. Most of this data can be found on their website.
One can visit this website to monitor solar activity such as sun spots, flares and prominences.
The image below is an image from a coronagraph LASCO C3. (Coronagraph is an instrument which blocks the bright light from the sun and observes its surroundings. Visit this link to know more about coronagraph. )
The image shows sun's corona and its surroundings. The streak seen at the bottom center of the image is the planet Jupiter.

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