Over on the BAUT forum, someone pointed out this image
http://www.bautforum.com/attachments/questions-answers/8525d1219249284-soho-c3-13-8-2008-20080813_0918_c3.jpg
I looked through the SoHO images to be sure it wasn't a hoax, and this image did appear on the official sight with no obvious artifact like this in either the image before or after it.
So it is obviously not a giant comet with a coma twice the diameter of the Sun which only appears for a few minutes... it is probably an artifact inside or right next to SoHO. Does anyone have a good guess as to what it is?
BAUT seems dead at the moment - direct links below
Aug 13th at 0842Z
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/javagif/gifs/20080813_0842_c3.gif
0918Z with wierd smudge
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/javagif/gifs/20080813_0918_c3.gif
0942Z without
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/javagif/gifs/20080813_0942_c3.gif
Looks like some sort of optical phenomenon - who knows - cool image none the less.
Looks to me like a floating piece of lint in the optics, that is out of focus.
I'm having a bit of difficulty visualizing what 'during the Perseids' could even mean, since isn't SOHO about a million miles away?
The feature appears pretty accurately radial to the Sun's location at the field center, which is a common property of internal reflections in complex optical systems. I'm wondering whether there could have been an excursion in the spacecraft pointing which let light from the innermost corona (let alone the photosphere) somewhere that gave in internal reflection in the camera. If bright enough, what shows up in that image could even be the inompletely scrubbed afterimage of a very bright stimulus.
Hi,
I also have something that I would love to have explained in detail.
http://www.qsl.net/vk3ukf/Soho.html
You'll find a still image and a close up, several short videos from SOHO showing the anomaly.
The explanation was error correcting software?
This appears on several frames at different wavelengths.
Would love to know more about the optics, is there one CCD for the different wavelengths?
One thing is for sure - it's not a 'real' object out in space. Nothing could remain stationary like that.
Each wavelength is actually a different telescope, with different optics and a different CCD. What the explanation is, I don't know.
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