Aren LASCO and EIT supposed to monitor the Sun all the time to forecast solar storms ?
SOHO is a research satellite and LASCO and EIT are research instruments. There is a big difference between research instruments and instruments that are designed to meet an observational requirement such as constantly monitoring the Sun. We do observe the Sun for transient events, such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) most of the time. But our mission is to do scientifically useful work. From time to time we may concentrate on taking images that are useful to someone’s research such as taking EIT 304 angstrom images or take calibration images at the expense of our usual set of images. NOAA is the official agency in the U.S. charged by Congress to monitor the Sun and do solar forecasting. We provide data to NOAA and other agencies worldwide to help them do forecasting. NASA and other government agencies are specifically prohibited by Congress from making forecasts. See NOAA for more information. The images put on our Web site are for public education and outreach but our major mission i
