Two for the Show

The Sun blew out two sizeable coronal mass ejections that headed in just about opposite directions over about a two-day period (July 24-25, 2011). Both of these were from the far side of the Sun and had no impact on Earth. The still shows the second and larger of the two. In the images, the Sun (represented by the white circle) and some additional area around it is blocked out with an occulting disk so that the fainter structures in the corona can be observed. The images were taken by the STEREO (Ahead) spacecraft.

• COR2_blast_July_medium.mov   
• COR2_blast_July_small.mov   
• COR2_blast_July.mpg   
• COR2_blast_July.mp4   
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