No
mysterious anomaly this, it's really the sun and surrounding space shown in
this image.
SOHO, the Solar &
Heliospheric Observatory, took three images which were combined into this one,
displaying the spacecraft's ability to see the sun and accompanying activity in
the corona (the area surrounding it) simultaneously.
The
composite image shows the sun itself in extreme UV light. The immediately
adjacent area is seen by the LASCO
C2 coronagraph, while the much larger view is taken by the LASCO C3
coronagraphy, with a field of view of 30 solar radii.
Here,
the sun has been enlarged about 50% to cover the C2 occulting disk. The color
tables of the instruments have been adjusted to give the image a unified,
single tone.
No
solar storms were erupting at the time of this image, but the structure of
streamers is easily seen extending out of the Sun in several directions.
--SOHO (ESA & NASA) and SPACE.com Staff
Credit: SOHO (ESA & NASA)
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