NASA's Heliophysics Fleet Captures May 1, 2013 Prominence Eruption and CME
- Visualizations by:
- Scott Wiessinger
- View full credits
Such eruptions soon leave SDO's field of view, but other satellites in NASA's Heliophysics fleet can pick them up, tracking such space weather to determine if they are headed toward Earth or spacecraft near other planets. With advance warning, many space assets can be put into safe mode and protect themselves from the effects of such particle radiation.
In addition to the images captured by SDO, the May 1, 2013 CME was also observed by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). SOHO houses two overlapping coronagraphs—telescopes where the bright sun is blocked by a disk so it doesn't overpower the fainter solar atmosphere—and they both saw the CME continue outward. The LASCO C2 coronagraph shows the region out to about 2.5 million miles. The LASCO C3 coronagraph expands even farther out to around 13.5 million miles. Both of these instruments show the CME as it expands and becomes fainter on its trip away from the sun.
NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) Ahead satellite saw the eruption from a very different angle. It, along with its twin STEREO Behind, is orbiting at a similar distance as Earth. STEREO-A orbits slightly faster than Earth and STEREO-B orbits slightly slower. Currently, STEREO-A is more than two-thirds of the way to being directly behind the sun, and has a view of the far side of the sun. From this perspective, the CME came off the right side of the sun. STEREO has an extreme ultraviolet camera similar to SDO's, but it also has coronagraphs like SOHO. As a result, using its two inner coronagraphs, it was able to track the CME from the solar surface out to 6.3 million miles.
Working together, such missions provide excellent coverage of a wide variety of solar events, a wealth of scientific data—and lots of beautiful imagery.
Watch this video on YouTube.
Several missions within NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory captured images of a gigantic eruption on the sun on May 1, 2013. Working together, such missions provide excellent coverage of a wide variety of solar events, a wealth of scientific data—and lots of beautiful imagery.
For complete transcript, click here.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. However, individual items should be credited as indicated above.
Animators
- Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle) [Lead]
- Tom Bridgman (GST)
Writers
- Karen Fox (ADNET)
- Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle)
Video editor
- Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle)
Producer
- Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle)
Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Tapes
This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:- None
Datasets used in this visualization
SOHO
SOHO monitors the Sun with a variety of instruments. Among the SOHO instruments is the Michelson Doppler Interferometer (MDI) and the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT).
Dataset can be found at: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov
See more visualizations using this data setSDO
Dataset can be found at: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/
See more visualizations using this data setSTEREO
The STEREO mission consists of two Sun-observing spacecraft that will travel around the Sun on orbits slightly inside and slightly outside Earth's orbit.
Dataset can be found at: https://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov
See more visualizations using this data setSTEREO-A (Collected with the Extreme UltraViolet Imager (EUVI) sensor)
Dataset can be found at: https://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov
See more visualizations using this data setSTEREO-A (Collected with the Coronograph 1 (COR1) sensor)
Dataset can be found at: https://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov
See more visualizations using this data setSTEREO-A (Collected with the Coronograph 2 (COR2) sensor)
Dataset can be found at: https://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov
See more visualizations using this data setSDO AIA 304 (A.K.A. 304 Filter) (Collected with the AIA sensor)
Dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See more visualizations using this data setSOHO LASCO/C2 (A.K.A. C2) (Collected with the Large Angle Spectrometric COronagraph (LASCO) sensor)
Dataset can be found at: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov
See more visualizations using this data setSOHO LASCO/C3 (A.K.A. C3) (Collected with the Large Angle Spectrometric COronagraph (LASCO) sensor)
Dataset can be found at: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov
See more visualizations using this data setNote: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.