Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2005 December 1
See Explanation.  Clicking on the picture will download
 the highest resolution version available.

SOHO's Uninterrupted View of the Sun
Credit: SOHO Consortium, ESA, NASA
Image Montage: Steele Hill (GSFC)

Explanation: Launched ten years ago this week, SOHO (the SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory) still enjoys an uninterrupted view of the Sun. Twelve sungazing instruments on board the spacecraft have explored the Sun's internal structure, the extensive solar atmosphere and solar wind, and discovered over 1,000 comets from a remarkable orbit around a point about 1.5 million kilometres directly sunward of planet Earth itself. At that location, known as a Lagrange point, the gravitational influence of the Earth and Sun are equal. With scientific instrument teams distributed around the world, the SOHO operations centre is located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland. Mission operations are planned through March of 2007 to allow the study of a complete 11-year solar cycle. Contributions from SOHO's instruments are represented in the colourful montage image. Happy tenth anniversary SOHO!

Tomorrow's picture: cosmic crustacean


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