Ring of "Fire" (June 11, 2010)

Hi-res TIF image (735K)

Quicktime Movie: Large (2.2M), Small (284K)
MPEG Movie (2.8M)

An almost perfectly circular coronal mass ejection (CME) blew out from the Sun as seen in this video clip covering 36 hours (June 5-6, 2010). It maintained its shape for many hours. Many scientists believe that such CME shapes represent huge loops of magnetic field. CME's are large solar storms that eject over a billion tons of matter at millions of miles per hour. SOHO captured the action with its C2 coronagraph, in which the sun is blocked out (by the circular occulting disk in the center of the image) to reveal the faint structures in the corona. The white circle represents the size of the Sun.

SOHO began its Weekly Pick some time after sending a weekly image or video clip to the American Museum of Natural History (Rose Center) in New York City. There, the SOHO Weekly Pick is displayed with some annotations on a large plasma display.

If your institution would also like to receive the same Weekly Pick from us for display (usually in Photoshop or QuickTime format), please send your inquiry to steele.hill@gsfc.nasa.gov.