THANKS to a short break in the clouds, astronomers who flocked to the
Caribbean island of Aruba to see last week鈥檚 solar eclipse had a spectacular
view. This image showing the Sun鈥檚 white outer atmosphere, or corona, was taken
during the eclipse using a telescope on the island. The central part of the
picture, captured on the same day by an ultraviolet camera on the Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, shows the lower atmosphere.
鈥淚mages taken during an eclipse give us density information down to the very
base of the corona,鈥� says Joseph Gurman, one of the SOHO team. This should help
answer many solar enigmas鈥攆or instance, why the corona is hundreds of
times hotter than the atmosphere below, and how giant blobs of plasma called
coronal mass ejections climb out of the Sun and set off into space.