The sun’s upper atmosphere, or corona, seen in ultraviolet light
ESA & NASA/Solar Probe/EUI Team
These fiery images are the clearest views of the Sun ever seen by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft.
Solar Orbiter, a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, is a state-of-the-art instrument orbiting the Sun and has been beaming information back to Earth since it arrived in 2020.
These images were taken in March 2023, when Solar Orbiter was less than 74 million kilometers from the sun. The photo above was taken using ultraviolet light and reveals the sun’s outer surface, or corona, in great detail, showing billowing 1 million-degree plasma exploding along the sun’s magnetic field lines. are.
To create this complete image of the sun’s corona, many smaller zoomed-in images had to be stitched together, resulting in this complete mosaic of 8000 pixels. In the future, Solar Orbiter will be able to obtain two such high-resolution photos of the Sun each year, according to ESA.
Visible Sun imaged by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft’s polarization measurements and solar seismic imager
ESA & NASA/Solar Probe/PHI Team
This second image shows what the sun’s surface, or photosphere, looks like when viewed from Solar Orbiter in visible light, the same light that our eyes can see . The temperature of this layer of the sun is approximately 4500-6000°C. The dark areas here are sunspots, which are cooler and emit less light than the surrounding areas.
Map of the Sun’s magnetic field measured by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft’s polarization measurements and solar seismic imager.
ESA & NASA/Solar Probe/PHI Team
Observations using the spacecraft’s magnetic instruments show that the Sun’s magnetic field is concentrated around the sunspot region (see image above). The field directs charged particles away from these areas, cooling them and giving them a dark appearance.
Velocity map, or tachogram, showing the speed and direction of the movement of matter on the visible surface of the Sun
ESA & NASA/Solar Probe/PHI Team
Solar Orbiter can also track the speed and direction of plasma as it moves across the Sun’s surface. In this velocity map (above), called a tachogram, blue represents movement toward the spacecraft and red represents movement away from the spacecraft.The sun’s plasma primarily rotates as the planet rotates, but sunspot regions It is shown that there is a divergence around .
This collection of images helps scientists understand the behavior of the sun’s corona and photosphere. Solar Orbiter will also image never-before-seen images of the Sun’s poles at the top and bottom of the star. Currently, not much is known about the solar poles, and researchers expect these regions to look significantly different from the rest of the sun.
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