THE HAUNTED SUN

4/30/00 TORPEDO INTO SOL

DANCE OF WORLDS

5/8/00 02:26 C2

Hi - You certainly have an interesting collection of non-solar, non-cosmic ray features observed by the SOHO LASCO coronagraphs on your: rogues.html page. I believe the LASCO team all agree that they are foreground features (i.e., not solar in origin), though I don't recall hearing much serious speculation on their origin. The length of the various tracks is a reflection of the objects' apparent motion during the LASCO exposure times (typically 12 - 25 seconds). Some of those that appear clearly to be out of focus have been estimated to be only a few meters in front of the SOHO spacecraft, and are therefore probably debris from the spacecraft itself. The sharper-appearing features could, however, be much farther away.

I would object to the inclusion of the EIT image you title "strgte5sm.jpg" with the LASCO images, however, since the long, nearly horizontal feature in it is definitely of solar origin. Whenever we take time series of images in our 304 Angstrom bandpass, we observe these "bifurcated jets" (i.e., jets brighter along their edges than in the middle). There may be some streaking due to the even longer (generally ~ 32 s) exposure time for EIT 304 Å images, but their appearance on succeeding frames, and their origin in solar active regions makes it clear that they are solar in origin.

Best, Joe Gurman US project scientist for SOHO Co-Investigator, SOHO-EIT

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