Sun-watching SOHO Back in Style

July 7, 2003

Scientists are receiving good data from the Sun-watching Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO for short. Starting in late June, a hardware glitch in pointing the spacecraft's high-gain antenna has called for creative solutions by ground operators to keep data flowing to Earth.

SOHO is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency to study the Sun, from its deep core to the outer corona, and the solar wind.

Instruments are now sending back data to ground operators and the first images were received last week, said Paal Brekke, SOHO Deputy Project Scientist for the European Space Agency. This includes the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) white light that shows a large sunspot close to the center of the Sun, he said.

In addition, SOHO transmitted a coronagraph image to Earth on July 2nd showing the planet Mercury and Saturn. Using an opaque disk to block the Sun's glare, SOHO coronagraphs can photograph the solar corona as well as stars and planets too near the Sun to see from Earth, Brekke told SPACE.com.

-- Leonard David

http://www.space.com/astronotes/astronotes.html