Proton Storm (May 18, 2012)

Hi-res TIF (2.9M)

Quicktime: Large ( 65M), Small (5.0M)
MPEG: Large ( 13M), Small (6.7M), MP4 (3.5M), M4V (1.2M)

An M5 flare and a CME (coronal mass ejection) unleashed a moderate proton storm of radiation and particles into space on May 17, 2012. The particles began smacking SOHO's LASCO C3 imager within 15 minutes of the flare: they appear as white streaks or what we call ?snow?. The CME is the billowing whitish cloud that heads off to the lower right. The next day another CME blossoms out to the left of the Sun. In these images the Sun is represented by a white circle, with the Sun blocked out by the blue occulting disk so that we can observe the faint structures in the corona beyond it. The bright object slowly moving left to right below the Sun is Jupiter. The video covers about 2 days of activity.

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.