The shot above is the from the Solar and Helioshperic Observatory (SOHO), a joint collaboration by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to study the Sun. I know, you may be thinking that somehow there is a huge observatory in the SOHO neighborhood of New York, but no, this is actually in space! SOHO recently captured a fantastic video of Venus, Mars, and Uranus all crowding into to the same picture with the sun.
The coronal mass ejection on the picture are giant bubbles of gas and magnetic fields which are ejected from the sun. Mars will be so close to these fields during April that it will limit the contact that we have with the Curiosity rover that is currently digging its way around the red planet.
