Decades of Sun from ESA & NASA’s SOHO

December 2, 2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO — a joint mission of the European Space Agency and NASA. Since its launch on that date, the mission has kept watch on the Sun. This view of the Sun has been processed by scientists at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C., which manages SOHO’s LASCO instrument, to merge views from two of LASCO’s coronagraphs: C2, which images closer to the Sun’s surface but has a smaller field of view, and C3, which has a wider field of view. Throughout the video, the Sun releases bursts of material called coronal mass ejections: fast-moving clouds of solar material that can trigger space weather effects on Earth — like auroras, communications problems, and even power outages — and for spacecraft in their path. These storms are more frequent near solar maximum, the period approximately every 11 years when the Sun’s activity is at a high point. The dark area that migrates between the lower left and the u