| TEAM MEMBERS
Leader 1
Leader 2
Student 1 (No Last Name)
Student 2
INTRODUCTION
SOHO is a cooperative mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). SOHO studies the sun from deep down in its core out to 32 solar radii. The spacecraft orbits the L1 Lagrangian point. From this orbit, SOHO is able to observe the sun 24 hours a day. Even though SOHO's primary objectives relate to solar and heliospheric physics, the onboard LASCO instrument has become the most prolific comet discoverer in history! LASCO (Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph) is able to take images of the solar corona by blocking the light coming directly from the Sun with an occulter disk, creating an artificial eclipse within the instrument itself. LASCO images are automatically posted on the web approximately every 20 minute. Since LASCO began taking observations in January of 1996, the C2 and C3 coronagraphs have observed over 950 new comets and 9 known comets. The vast majority of these comets were discovered by amateur astronomers who closely examine the images for potential comets.
THE PROJECT: Image Processing
This project involves a real world application of finding comets in sun observation images from the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft. | 
