The Sun's hot atmosphere today

See the bright twisted clouds of hot gas, revealing storminess, and the dark, calm regions called coronal holes. These SOHO images, obtained in near-real time, with invisible ultraviolet light, give the scientists their routine weather maps of the Sun. Occasionally a solar flare appears, as a small, intensely bright flash. SOHO images come in a range of colours - the different colours denote various ultraviolet wavelengths, each emanating from gas at a particular temperature - orange, 80 000 degrees, blue 1 000 000 degrees, green 1 500 000 degrees and brown 2 500 000 degrees.

This particular image is taken with SOHO's Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT), 18 March 2002 (full-field He II 304 Å)