Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO)

LASCO is an instrument that creates an artifical solar eclipse - it is called a coronograph.

A coronagraph blocks out the light from the Sun directly, allowing the sensors to see the weak light from the outer atmosphere (the corona).

LASCO has three coronagraphs which take images of the corona from 1.1 to 32 solar radii, which is about 450,000 miles to 13,000,000 miles from the Sun's surface.