Halloween 2003 Solar Storms: SOHO/MDI Magnetograms

Here is a view of the full solar disk during a two-week period in October and November of 2003 which exhibited some of the largest solar activity events since the advent of space-based solar observing.

The Michelson Doppler Interferometer (MDI) takes images of the Sun at five very narrow wavelength bands and four different polarizations in visible light. For this sequence, the images are processed in a form that reveals the magnetic field strength on the solar photosphere. Other combinations of the images act as white-light images and dopplergrams (which measure the velocity of the solar 'surface').

This movie is part of a series of movies with matching cadence designed to play synchronously with each other. The other movies in this series are

• Halloween 2003 Solar Storms: SOHO/EIT Ultraviolet, 195 angstroms
• Halloween 2003 Solar Storms: SOHO/EIT Ultraviolet, 304 angstroms
• Halloween 2003 Solar Storms: SOHO/MDI Continuum
• Halloween 2003 Solar Storms: SOHO/EIT and SOHO/LASCO

For more information, visit the SOHO project page.