Eclipse views (April 18, 2016)

A total solar eclipse offers the rare opportunity to observe the Sun's inner corona, the hot and tenuous outer atmosphere of our daylight star. In the outer regions, observations from space are superior but the inner parts are occulted by the instruments' external occulter (artificial moon). By merging eclipse observations taken from the ground and space simultaneously, a global view of the magnetized density structures of the corona can be obtained.

This was done for above image, after applying image processing techniques to two images:

i. a reconstructed eclipse image from observations in visible light taken at Ternate (Indonesia) by Jaime Vilinga (Angola) and the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris team, processed by Reinhold Wittich;

ii. an image taken by the SOHO/LASCO C2 coronagraph observing at the same time (March 9, 2016 at 00:52 UT), cleaned from artifacts and from non coronal objects. The contrast was enhanced and the large gravity induced radial gradient reduced. The image orientation is solar North up, East to the left.

Copyright: Serge Koutchmy, IAP (CNRS), SOHO (ESA&NASA).

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.