STEREO's First Images

The NASA/APL STEREO Spacecraft A has sent back its first pictures of the sun. Eventually Spacecrafts A and B will produce stereoscopic images of solar flares (coronal mass ejections), but for the time being, we have some pretty snappy images of big Sol.

Here's the first montage:




This is a mosaic of the extreme ultraviolet images from the STEREO Ahead observatory's SECCHI/Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope taken on Dec. 4, 2006, its first day of imaging. These false color images show the sun's atmospheres at a range of different temperatures. Clockwise from top left:

• 1 million degrees Kelvin (171 A)
• 1.5 million K (195 A)
• 60,000-80,000 K (304 A)
• 2.5 million K (286 A)

Check out the rest here.