Earth-Directed CME

The second of two CMEs from the evening of Feb. 5, 2013, can be seen bursting away from the sun in the upper left hand side of this image, which was captured by the joint ESA/NASA mission the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) at 11:12 p.m. EST. The sun itself is obscured in this picture – taken by an instrument called a coronagraph -- so that its bright light doesn’t drown out the picture of the dimmer surrounding atmosphere, called the corona. Credit: ESA&NASA/SOHO

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