STEREO uses that technology to look at the corona to this day: for example, here’s an image taken by STEREO’s COR2 coronagraph yesterday. Suddenly, the corona was open for viewing any time.
Then in 1939, Bernard Lyot designed the coronagraph, a tool that created an artificial eclipse inside a telescope. Yet for most of human history, we had to wait around for an eclipse to see it. These magnetically driven eruptions explode with the energy of a million hydrogen bombs, hurtling hot, electrically charged particles every which way - including towards Earth. It’s also a minefield of gigantic explosions, like solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Somehow, it’s hundreds of times hotter than the Sun’s surface, and scientists don’t know why (this mystery is known as the coronal heating problem).
The corona is a pretty peculiar place - following laws of physics unlike the ones we experience in our day-to-day lives. The only time we can see the corona from Earth with the naked eye is during a total solar eclipse, when the Moon blocks the much brighter photosphere below it. STEREO can see the Sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere. NASA’s STEREO spacecraft watches the Sun 24/7 - but the Sun it sees is not the one you and I see.
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