Sun's Busy Week

The Sun blew off over a dozen solar storms during a busy week of activity and appeared to digest one comet as well (Jan. 26 - Feb. 1, 2014). Several eruptions were quite bright as they sent large particle clouds into space. In these images from STEREO's COR2 instrument the Sun (represented by the white circle) is blocked by a black occulting disk so that we can observe faint features in the corona. The sun-grazing comet appears on Jan. 31 in the lower right and seems to dive right into the Sun later that day. The bright object that enters the field of view on Jan. 31 moving left to right is Jupiter.

• COR2_busyweek_best.mov   
• COR2_busyweek_sm.mov   
• COR2_busyweek_sm.mpg   
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