Coronal Mass Ejections

The early 1970's can be said to mark the beginning of The Enlightenment in the history of the Space Age, literally as well as by analogy to European history. Instruments blinded by Earth's atmosphere were lifted above and, for the first time, saw clearly and continuously the ethereal white light and sparkling x-rays from the solar corona. From these two bands of the light spectrum came images of coronal mass ejections and coronal holes, respectively. But whereas coronal holes were immediately identified as the source of high-speed solar wind streams, at first coronal mass ejections were greeted only by a sense of wonder. It took years of research to identify their signatures in the solar wind before the fastest ones could be identified with the well-known shock disturbances that cause the most violent space storms.