Image of the solar corona, taken by the SECCHI outer coronagraph (COR2) on the STEREO Ahead observatory. This image was produced from the STEREO space weather beacon telemetry. Because of the high amount of compression used for the space weather beacon, the image quality is far lower than in the final science product.

This figure plots the current positions of the STEREO Ahead (red) and Behind (blue) spacecraft relative to the Sun (yellow) and Earth (green). The dotted lines show the angular displacement from the Sun.
Units are in A.U.

When the two spacecraft are close to Earth, an expanded view of the region around Earth will appear on the right, in the same orientation as the Sun-centered view.

Credits: SSC (STEREO Science Center), NASA Deep Space Network, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory: Chilbolton, UK ,National Institute of Information and Communications Technology: Koganei, Japan, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales: Toulouse, France