Optical photograph of a solar prominence, a jet of glowing gas reaching up from the Sun's chromosphere (upper atmosphere) into the corona. Prominences are visible as bright jets, arches and loops around the limb (edge) of the Sun during an eclipse, or as dark lines or filaments silhouetted against the Sun's disc. This photograph was taken using a coronagraph, a device which blocks out the bright light from the disc, producing an artificial eclipse which makes the prominences visible.