Image: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Yesterday NASA released additional images taken by their STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) spacecraft. The images are not typical photographs. NASA scientists are focusing their efforts on the phenomenon known as a coronal mass ejection (CME). It turns out that closeups of the CME itself are shaped something like a croissant. This isn’t a big surprise, as CMEs are like bubbles of charged particles that were confined by the Sun’s magnetic field, but are so energetic that they achieve escape velocity and spew out into interplanetary space. CMEs can be dangerous for spacecraft, especially manned spacecraft. Read more about CME and the STEREO spacecraft
here. Additional images can be found
here.