An Uninterrupted View of the Sun

SOHO is designed to study the internal structure of the Sun, its extensive outer atmosphere and the origin of the solar wind, the stream of highly ionized gas that blows continuously outward through the Solar System.

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is one of ESA and NASA's most ambitious projects for the 1990's. It will help us to understand the interactions between the Sun and the Earth's environment better than has been possible to date. Its legacy may enable scientists to solve some of the most perplexing riddles about the Sun, including the heating of the solar corona, the acceleration of the solar wind, and the physical conditions of the solar interior. It will give solar physicists their first long term, uninterrupted view of the mysterious star that we call the Sun.

That view of the Sun is achieved by operating SOHO from a permanent vantage point 1.5 million kilometers ahead of the Earth in a halo orbit around the L1 Lagrangian point. SOHO Will observe the Sun continuously for at least two years. All previous solar observatories have orbited the Earth, from where their observations were periodically interrupted as our planet `eclipsed' the Sun.


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