Talking pictures: know your energy source.

• Position: Coronal mass ejections - Photograph

8 January 2002: A widely spreading coronal mass ejection blasts over a billion tons of matter into space at millions of kilometers an hour. (Coronal images normally black out the disk of the sun here a sun image is superimposed for effect.)

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All images are from two Earth-orbiting observatories: S0HO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory--http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/) and TRACE (Transition Region and Coronal Explorer--http://trace.lmsal.com/).

Top left: A combination of white-light, ultraviolet, and extreme ultraviolet images showing two large, intense solar flares (green) as they arch above the solar surface (red)

Top right: An active region of the sun on a quiet day: gas at a million degrees...