The Solar Orbiter mission has released new images of the Sun, showcasing the star's visible surface at the highest resolution achieved to date. These images reveal solar spots and plasma dynamics, potentially providing physicists with new insights into the Sun's mysteries.
Captured on March 22, 2023, and published on November 20, 2024, the images depict various dynamic aspects of the Sun, including magnetic field movements and the brightness of the ultra-heated solar corona. The spacecraft utilized two of its six imaging instruments, the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) and the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), from a distance of 74 million kilometers.
Solar Orbiter, a joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA launched in February 2020, orbits the Sun at an average distance of 42 million kilometers. Missions like Solar Orbiter and NASA's Parker Solar Probe aim to answer key questions about our star, such as what drives its solar wind and why the corona is significantly hotter than the Sun's surface.
While Parker Solar Probe is set to make the closest approach to the Sun by a spacecraft at the end of December, Solar Orbiter's mission focuses on capturing the closest images of the solar surface.
Daniel Müller, the project scientist for Solar Orbiter, emphasized the importance of the Sun's magnetic field for understanding its dynamic nature. The new high-resolution maps produced by the PHI instrument illustrate the intricate beauty of the solar surface's magnetic field and plasma flows.
The images were created by assembling 25 individual photographs into a mosaic, with each complete mosaic revealing nearly 8,000 pixels in diameter, showcasing incredible detail. The processing of these images was a novel and complex task, but future data processing is expected to be expedited.
Mark Miesch, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center, noted that the images allow for the observation of both large-scale solar features and fine details on the surface. He remarked on the necessity of examining the Sun in its entirety to understand the complex interplay between its magnetic fields and plasma flows.
In October, scientists from NOAA, NASA, and the International Solar Cycle Prediction Group reported that the Sun has reached solar maximum, indicating a peak in its 11-year activity cycle. Solar activity, including eruptions and coronal mass ejections, affects space weather that impacts Earth, including potential disruptions to power grids, GPS, and aviation.