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SOHO stands for Solar Heliospheric Observatory
and it's a mission that was launched by ESA (the European Space Agency)
and NASA, in 1995 to study the sun.
The sun is a star and the universe is made up of stars.
But the sun is very close to us. We are able to see the sun in great detail,
so if we understand our sun then that allows to have a better understanding of the rest
of the stars and consequently the rest of the universe.
Well the first time I saw a SOHO image my reaction was basically... WOW! I was blown away.
I'd never seen the kinds of detail, the kinds of structure, the kinds of
dynamics that were going on and any sort image of the sun before
and I think that this is probably true for a lot of scientist.
One of the ways SOHO studies the corona
is using what we call a coronagraph. And so a coronagraph creates an artificial eclipse,
because the sun itself, surface of the sun, is about a million times
brighter then the outer structure of the corona you need
block that bright disk out so you can see the much fainter outer corona.
Using SOHO and using a technique called helioseismology,
very similar to seismology on the earth, we actually able to
see inside the sun. And so what we were able to do is see the layers
of the sun just below the visible surface that we call the convection zone.
And that's where all sorts of dynamics are going on, the inside of the sun
bubbling up to the surface and that's really where all of the
solar phenomena that we see is first developed and so
we were able see underneath the surface and see these flows of solar plasma
see the formation of sun spots. And this is something that's never been done before.
We are actually see the details inside of a star.
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I have been staring at images from SOHO for months and months and
the data was beautiful but then I saw TRACE you got to see these fine details
these tiny loops you just completely didn't even imagine were there
then you see them and it's like nothing you've ever seen.
Your seeing details of the coronal loops. In the previous images you
from other satellites it would look like it was one big loop and when you actually get to see TRACE
you see all these teeny tiny finely... they almost look like threads.
And there's these teeny tiny loops and they are just breaking off and reforming
and throwing plasma. One loop can be vastly
different temperature then the next loop so that has been a big thing. It's helped
with magnetic data. They are able to see that when the loops break off they can see the way
the magnetic field is twisting and so the instruments on SOHO
work closely with TRACE and visa versa so we can use all
the data together to better understand things.
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