20 years on, SOHO changed the way we look at Sun

Washington, December 2: The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) that revolutionised the field of science known as heliophysics and became the greatest comet hunter of all time - reaching 3,000 comet discoveries in September 2015 - has completed 20 years in space. After 20 years in space, the observatory launched in 1995 to study the sun and its influence out to the very edges of the solar system from the European Space Agency (ESA) and SA, is still going strong. SOHO has provided the basis for more than 5,000 scientific papers till date, the US space agency said in a statement on Wednesday. When SOHO was launched, the field of heliophysics looked very different than it does today. Questions about the interior of the sun, the origin of the constant outflow of material from the sun known as the solar wind, and the mysterious heating of the solar atmosphere were still unswered. (IANS)