Massive solar storm pointed straight at STEREO Behind

Like looking down the barrel of a cannon, the STEREO Behind spacecraft caught the Sun throwing a massive coronal mass ejection (CME) directly at it on March 5, 2013. Here are two movies showing the event as seen in the emission line at 195 Angstroms of highly ionized iron by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI, green), and in scattered white light by the inner (COR1, blue) and outer (COR2, red) coronagraphs. The event starts with a strong flare right in the active region right in the center of the Sun as seen from STEREO Behind, but which was hidden behind the limb for Earth-based telescopes. The associated CME then is seen as a halo around the Sun passing through the COR1 and COR2 fields of view, reaching the spacecraft itself two days later on March 7, where it was seen by the in situ particle and magnetic field instruments. While this solar blast was not pointed at Earth, it did include the planet Mars in its path. This prompted NASA to place the Curiosity rover on Mars in standby mode to wait out the storm.

• halo_20130305b_cor2.mov   
• halo_20130305b_cor2_small.mov   
• halo_20130305b_cor2.mp4   
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