NASA's Sun Glasses

We've been observing the sun with inter-planetary spacecraft since what? The Pioneer missions? Well, now NASA's sent up a twin set of spacecraft to monitor the sun for solar eruptions. They'll function as a set of giant 3-D glasses, orbiting the sun fore and aft of the earth, and enabling astronomers to more accurately gauge the size, shape, and direction of solar flares. You've gotta admire the number-crunching, that went into calculating the launch trajectories of these gadgets, too.