From the day before it rotated into view until it rotated out of view about 2 weeks later, Active Region 808, an over-achiever if ever there was one, spouted off nine X-class flares (the largest kind). The largest was an X17 flare on September 7, the fifth largest recorded.

The still image shows shows a coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with one of the large flares as it blasted charged particles into space. The video clip shows activity from September 9 - 14 during which at least 4 flares can be seen in the LASCO C3 coronagraph. The white circle represents the size of the Sun, which is hidden by the blue occulting disk so that activity in the faint corona can be observed. The flurry of white streaks and blips seen during the first half of the clip are where the coronagraph's detector was hit by protons accelerated by the flare and CME that occurred just before the movie begins.

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Previous Picks of the Week

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.