Spectacular images of Sun and its active regions at different wavelengths

Blue : 1M degrees
Green: 1.5M degrees
Red: 2M degrees

The image shows the corona for a moderately active Sun, with some (red) hot active regions in both hemispheres, surrounded by the (blue/green) cooler plasma of the quiet-Sun corona. Notice also the north polar-crown filament, the trans-equatorial loops, and the coronal hole in the south-east (lower-right) corner of the image and the smaller one over the north pole. This image shows the solar corona in a false-color, 3-layer composite: the blue, green, and red channels show the 171Å , 195Å , and 284Å wavelengths, respectively (most sensitive to emission from 1, 1.5, and 2 million degree gases). (TRACE Project, Stanford-Lockheed Institute for Space Research, NASA)

A view of a sunspot and granules on the Sun’s surface, seen in the H-alpha wavelength on August 4, 2003. H-alpha, is a specific emission line created by hydrogen at 6562.8 Angstroms.

This TRACE 171 Angstrom-wavelength image from November 11, 2006 shows a sizeable active region at the east limb of the Sun (rotated clockwise 90 degrees so north is to the right) just as it rotates onto Earth-facing hemisphere. Notice the low-lying dark structures of filaments at the leading edge of the region, some “levitating” dark material on the right-hand side of the region, and the small ephemeral region towards the lower right.

This LASCO C2 image, taken 8 January 2002, shows a widely spreading coronal mass ejection (CME) as it blasts more than a billion tons of matter out into space at millions of kilometers per hour. The C2 image was turned 90 degrees so that the blast seems to be pointing down. An EIT 304 Angstrom image from a different day was enlarged and superimposed on the C2 image so that it filled the occulting disk for effect

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