Three's No Crowd (March 11, 2011)

Hi-res TIF image (2.1M)

Quicktime Movie: Large ( 42M), Small (2.1M)
MPEG Large (6.7M), Large (4.0M)

SOHO caught three solar storms as they blasted clouds of particles into space over about a one-day period (Mar. 7-8, 2011). In the second and largest solar storm, a coronal mass ejection was associated with a prominence eruption and a proton storm of high energy particles traveling at half the speed of light. The protons appear as a snowstorm of specks hitting SOHO's imagers. It is expected that this storm will pass by Earth and generate aurora a couple of days later. In the coronagraph images, the Sun is blocked out by a blue occulting disk and the size of the Sun is represented by the white circle.

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.