what does it do, I noticed in this link that they are monitoring white objects they look like comets to me, some bigger some smaller, like on the far right there is a rather larger one, and smaler ones around the whole pic,

Is swan there to monitor comets..

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/...ion-comets.gif

Well from what I could understand from the SOHO site, SWAN is an instrument used to monitor something called Lyman Alpha Radiation which is released by hydrogen atoms when they return from the excited state. An atom or ion is in the excited state when it absorbs energy in the from of an electron or a photon, when the atom or ion returns to normal (called the ground state) it releases energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation (the visible part of it we call light btw) , in the case of your average hydrogen atom, it emits this particular kind of radiation which is called Lyman Alpha. Apparently it's used to determine the intensity of solar activity, and yes it's been used to monitor comets as to find out how much water they contain.

Hope this helps

Guys if this is inacurate could anyone correct me?

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Hmmm, SWAN is the Solar Wind ANisotropies, I seem to remember that it makes radiation maps of the radiation that is created when the solar wind hits hydrogen atoms in the solarsystem..

skywatcher,
Why are all of your posts here in the Planet X forum? :-? Please ask questions in the proper forum. This question belongs in the General Astronomy forum.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

I think he was going to make a correlation to Planet X using the swan data ... perhaps a follow-up being "why are some parts blacked out" or something.

I could be wrong and jumping to conclusions, but me thinks skywatcher may be zeta-pos.

I appologize in advance if I am incorrect.