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Atists impression of the twin STEREO satellites

The Heliospheric Imager for the NASA STEREO Mission

Part of the SECCHI Consortium

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In December 2008, The Heliospheric Imagers onboard the two STEREO spacecraft took these startling images of a solar storm erupting from the Sun and heading towards the Earth. This, relatively small,  storm was travelling at around 360 kilometres per second and arrived at Earth on the afternoon of the 16th December 2008 where it was seen to cause a disturbance to the Earth’s magnetic field. The Sun is unusually quiet at the moment, providing ideal conditions in which to observe such events in isolation before solar activity begins to increase and the solar wind becomes much more complex again.

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