NOTE TO EDITORS: 98-29

SOHO EIT AND EARTH VIEW COMPOSITE: A composite eclipse photo taken today by scientists on the ground in Aruba and also by a joint NASA/European Space Agency spacecraft can be found at the following Internet address: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftp/newsmedia/eclipse/

This photo is a composite view of the Feb. 26 total solar eclipse. The central image is a view of the solar surface and lower atmosphere made using the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) instrument on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. The surrounding image is a view of the Sun's corona taken during the eclipse using a telescope on the island of Aruba. The corona is seen as a shimmering white veil around the moon during a total solar eclipse. It consists of electrically charged gas that has been heated to one million degrees Fahrenheit. The intensely heated gas streams from the solar surface at 250 miles per second. By combining the two types of images, scientists hope to learn how events on the solar surface, including explosive ones such as flares and coronal mass ejections, affect the corona and resulting solar wind. (Photo credit: Dr. Jay Pasachoff, Williams College, Williamstown, Mass. and the SOHO EIT Consortium; SOHO is a joint ESA-NASA program.)