SOHO image of the Sun with a handle-shaped Prominence!

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Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) image of a huge, handle-shaped prominence taken on Sept. 14,1999 in the 304 angstrom wavelength. Prominences are huge clouds of relatively cool dense plasma suspended in the Sun's hot, thin corona. At times, they can erupt, escaping the Sun's atmosphere. Emission in this spectral line shows the upper chromosphere at a temperature of about 60,000 degrees K. Every feature in the image traces magnetic field structure. The hottest areas appear almost white, while the darker red areas indicate cooler temperatures.
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Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO

NASA's SDO captures X7 Class Flare in extreme UV light

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An x-class flare began at 3:48 AM EDT on August 9, 2011 and peaked at 4:05 AM. The flare burst from sun spot region AR11263, before it rotated out of view. The image here was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in extreme ultraviolet light at 131 Angstroms. This image is from the beginning of the event just before the satellite sensors were overwhelmed by energetic particles.
Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA

NASA's SDO spots three Active Regions on the Sun!

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All the way to the right is AR 1260 (looks like a group of Islands). In the middle is AR 1261, which is about the size of Earth. And coming across the eastern limb is another, not yet names, active region coming around.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SDO

Giant Solar Prominences captured by NASA's SDO!

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These solar prominences - captured on March 30, 2010 by NASA's SDO - are large arches of dense gas that are attached to the Sun at the photosphere (where the light we receive on Earth originates from), and extend out into the corona (the Sun's atmosphere). They appear to be very bright when viewed against the backdrop of space, but when seen on the disk of the Sun they appear dark and are known as filaments. This difference occurs because they are much cooler than the Sun’s surface, but when compared to the rest of space they are very, very hot.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SDO AIA Team

There's always the Sun - Always, always, always the Sun

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The Sun.
Credit: NASA/Martin Stojanovski

Sun's Spiraling Magnetic Loops observed in Extreme UV by SDO

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Cascades of spiraling magnetic loops observed in extreme ultraviolet light by SDO danced and twisted above an active region on the Sun (Apr. 3-5, 2011). These loops are charged particles spinning along the magnetic field lines, and thus visually revealing them. The bright active region was fairly strong and the activity persistent, though not explosive. At one point darker plasma can be seen being pulled back and forth across the region's center.
Credit: NASA/SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory)

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) sees Spring Eclipse!

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What happened while SDO exited the eclipse on March 29? The edge of the Earth is the ragged line across the southern hemisphere of the Sun. Where is the sharp line seen in the HMI movie from the FirstLight gallery or the edge of the moon in a lunar transit? The answer is a combination of atmospheric absorption and color tables. The sharp line in HMI is in the visible spectrum and emphasizes the thinness of the troposphere that we live in. Light at the EUV wavelengths of AIA is completely absorbed much higher in the Earth's atmosphere (at an altitude of about 300 km at the limb). Even small amounts of atmosphere remove the light from the picture. Then the image is processed into an image we can see by changing to a log intensity and scaling to a color table. The log intensity makes the bright bits and dim bits visible in the same image but over-emphasizes the dim background. Even a little absorption is enough to cause a dim region to drop to below the minimum intensity allowed in the color table, hence the irregular border that traces out the dimmer regions seen in the following uneclipsed image.
Credit: NASA/SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory)