incomplete understanding of conditionsin the solar interior or of the fundamentalphysicsof elementary particles.

The mea-

surements of flow patterns and rotation in the solar convection zone are key to the development of models of stellar convection

and the generation of magnetic fieldsby dynamo action.

SOHO New Discoveries

Withtheveryearliestobservations,SOHO'sinstrumentsverifiedonceagainthatthevarietyofnatureexceedsthehuman

imagination.The coronal instruments, the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) and Ultraviolet Coronagraph

Spectrometer(UVCS),revealed an unexpectedly dynamic and organized outercorona.The beauty of the coronalimagesis

breathtaking (see cover,top right).The LASCO movie ofa30 solar diameterfield around the Sun asitpassesthrough the

Milky Way, enhanced by the passage ofa Sun grazing comet and a coronal mass ejection (CME) is simply glorious. UVCS has

discovered coronalemission lines with excpetionally broad profiles, which could well be evidence for MHD wave damping in

thecorona.Themagnetographrecord(seeFigure1)oftheSolarOscillationsInvestigation(SOI)hasrevealedindetaila

continuously erupting magnetic carpeton the Sun that is causing a reevaluation of how magnetic flux is distributed from active

regions to the polesand hence how the solar cycle operates.The new technique of time-distance helioseismology has produced

the firstimagesof convection below thedirectly visible surface (see Figure 2).Because ofSOHO'sthree-axisstabilization,

CELIAShasbeen able to detectmany previously unobserved isotopes,and to observe shorttime-scale changesin solar wind

composition for the first time.

Operations, Data Access, and Instrument/Spacecraft Status

OperationsThe SOHO instruments (see Table 1) were selected to complement each other (cf. Figures 5, 6, and 7 of Domingoet

al.1995,Solar Physics, 162, 1).The helioseismologyinstruments on SOHO measure the surface magnetic fields, the surface

flows,and flowsand plumesbelow thesurface.The coronalinstrumentsprovide both high spatialresolution mapsofthe

locations of the energy releasesand spectral diagnostics to determine the mechanisms of the release processes.The all sky H I

Lymanaimagershowstheregionwherethewindinteractswiththeinterstellarneutralhydrogenandfinally,theparticle

Figure 1.The longitudinal component of the "Quiet" Sun

photospheric magneticfield, asmeasured every96 min-

utes by SOHO-MDI. Dark and light areas represent fields

of opposite polarity.

Figure 2.The first view of a stellar convection zone: an early

resultfromatime-distancehelioseismologyinversionof

SOHO-MDI/SOI observation