Written by Susan Hendrix
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD – In late November, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory’s (SOHO) online “Pick of the Week” reached an impressive milestone: its 500th edition. This is an incredibly popular feature, which highlights one video or image of the sun each week.
The SOHO project is a cooperative effort between the European Space Agency and NASA. SOHO was designed to study the internal structure of the Sun, its extensive outer atmosphere and the origin of the solar wind, the stream of highly ionized gas that blows continuously outward through the Solar System.

When the twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft were launched in 2006, their data was also included in POTW features, depending on which event or topic seemed to have wider appeal. Steele Hill of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, is the originator and producer of this highly successful program. Goddard’s Joe Gurman, SOHO and STEREO project scientist, has supported this effort from its initial concept and provides comments on the content as each selection is developed. SOHO’s webmaster George Dimitoglou of Goddard has been instrumental in ensuring the images, videos and captions get uploaded to the SOHO website.
“I was pleasantly surprised at this news,” said Hill. “I just kept selecting and producing them each week and, wow, the total really added up fast. What a great experience it has been for me to be a part of this ground-breaking and long-lived mission.” NASA launched SOHO and is responsible for mission operations. Large radio dishes around the world which form NASA’s Deep Space Network are used for data downlink and commanding. Mission control is based at NASA Goddard.
To view the current POTW and past entries, visit: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/pickoftheweek/
Solar & Heliospheric Observatory Mission
The Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) project is a cooperative effort between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. SOHO was designed to study the internal structure of the Sun, its extensive outer atmosphere and the origin of the solar wind, the stream of highly ionized gas that blows continuously outward through the Solar System.
SOHO was launched on December 2nd, 1995. The SOHO spacecraft was built in Europe by an industry team led by Matra, and instruments were provided by European and American scientists. NASA was responsible for the launch and is now responsible for mission operations. Large radio dishes around the world which form NASA’s Deep Space Network are used to track the spacecraft beyond the Earth’s orbit. Mission control is based at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.