solar storms and comets

Total solar eclipses let us see the Sun's corona, which we can't normally see because of the bright glare from the Sun. But total solar eclipses only happen about once a year and then they only last for a few minutes. That doesn't give us much time to study the corona. A better way is to use special telescopes in space.

Here's a picture taken by SOHO's LASCO telescope. So that we can see the Sun's corona clearly, the Sun itself is hidden behind a black disk which is inside the LASCO instrument. I’ve drawn in a white circle to show where and how big the actual Sun is.

When we observe the corona in this way we often see hugh explosions like the one in the movie above, or as in the images below.

These are no ordinary explosions, they are Coronal Mass Ejections or CMEs. They blow incredible amounts of material from the Sun’s atmosphere out into space.