This animation shows a series of views of the sun captured with the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on ESA/NASA’s Solar Orbiter on May 30, 2020. They show the sun’s appearance at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, which is in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Images at this wavelength reveal the upper atmosphere of the sun and the corona, which has a temperature of more than a million degrees. Solar Orbiter/EUI Team (ESA & NASA; CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL)
The first images of the sun from the European Space Agency/NASA’s Solar Orbiter have been released and are stupendous. They are the closest photos ever taken of the star that we orbit, and have already revealed some fascinating features that nobody knew existed.
Launched early this year, the spacecraft completed its first close pass of the sun in mid-June and began sending back images and data.
“These amazing images will help scientists piece together the sun’s atmospheric layers, which is important for understanding how it drives space weather near the Earth and throughout the solar system.” aid Holly Gilbert, NASA project scientist for the mission at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
The orbiter has already found previously unknown found across the sun miniature versions of the gigantic solar flares that reach out far into space. But these much smaller versions, deemed to be “campfires,” are so far seen by not understood.
Normally, the first images from a spacecraft confirm the instruments are working; scientists don’t expect new discoveries from them. But the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager, or EUI, on Solar Orbiter returned data hinting at solar features never observed in such detail.
“The campfires we are talking about here are the little nephews of solar flares, at least a million, perhaps a billion times smaller,” said mission principal investigator David Berghmans an astrophysicist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium said.
“When looking at the new high resolution EUI images, they are literally everywhere we look.”
Solar Orbiter spots ‘campfires’ on the Sun. Locations of campfires are annotated with white arrows.
Solar Orbiter/EUI Team (ESA & NASA; CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL)
That the Solar Orbiter has been able to continue on its mission has been no simple feat.
The coronavirus forced mission control at the European Space Operations Center (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany to close down completely for more than a week. During commissioning, the period when each instrument is extensively tested, ESOC staff were reduced to a skeleton crew.… Read more
