Two Powerful Coronal Mass Ejections (November 18, 2011)

Hi-res TIF image (2.6M)

Movies
Quicktime: Large (9.9M), Medium (2.5M), Small (171K).
MPEG: Large (7.9M), Small (3.0M)

Two significant coronal mass ejections (CMEs) occurred in less than two days (Nov. 12-14, 2011) as observed by STEREO's Ahead COR 2 coronagraph.  The first event is a halo CME event in that the leading edge of the particle cloud expanded in an arc around the Sun.  The cloud was headed right towards the Ahead spacecraft.  In the second, larger event the bright cloud is heading out into space and away from Earth.  The Sun, represented by the white circle, is blocked out by a black disk so that faint features in the corona can be observed. The bright object moves into the field of view in the lower right is Mercury.

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.