Latest news with #SolarOrbiter
India Today
21-07-2025
- Science
- India Today
7 stunning Nasa images of the Sun you need to see
7 stunning Nasa images of the Sun you need to see Jul 21, 2025 Credit: Nasa This image from June 20, 2013, at 11:15 p.m. EDT shows the bright light of a solar flare on the left side of the Sun and an eruption of solar material shooting through the Sun's atmosphere, called a prominence eruption. This animation shows five views of the Sun captured by European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter. The Sun blew out a coronal mass ejection along with part of a solar filament over a three-hour period (Feb. 24, 2015). While some of the strands fell back into the Sun, a substantial part raced into space. This illustration lays a depiction of the sun's magnetic fields over an image captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on March 12, 2016. The complex overlay of lines can teach scientists about the ways the sun's magnetism changes. On May 9, 2016, Mercury passed directly between the Sun and Earth, making a transit of the Sun. Mercury transits happen about 13 times each century. A very long solar filament that had been snaking around the Sun erupted (Dec. 6, 2010) with a flourish. It had been almost a million km long (about half a solar radius) and a prominent feature on the Sun visible over two weeks. NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, constantly observes the outer regions of the Sun's corona using a coronagraph, which blocks the bright solar disk.
News18
12-07-2025
- Science
- News18
Sun's South Pole Captured For The First Time In Historic Mission
Last Updated: ESA-NASA's Solar Orbiter reveals the Sun's South Pole for the first time, uncovering the star's magnetic chaos and opening a new era in space science In a landmark achievement for solar observation, the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA have unveiled the first-ever images of the Sun's South Pole, captured by the joint Solar Orbiter mission. Released on June 11, 2025, these high-resolution images offer an extraordinary new perspective on our closest star. A Unique Orbital Path Previous missions such as SOHO and the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) have only viewed the Sun from the plane in which Earth and other planets orbit. However, the Solar Orbiter broke new ground by reaching an angle of 17 degrees above the solar plane, capturing the South Pole in unprecedented detail on March 23, 2025. The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) recorded views of the corona, that is, the Sun's superheated outer layer reaching temperatures of one million degrees Celsius. 🌞 See the Sun from a whole new the first time, our Solar Orbiter mission has captured close-up images of the Sun's mysterious poles, regions long hidden from our view. In 2025, Solar Orbiter gave us a first-ever look at the Sun's south pole. Remarkably, it… — European Space Agency (@esa) June 11, 2025 Surprising Discoveries At The Solar South Pole Among the most striking revelations is a region of magnetic chaos at the Sun's South Pole, where north and south magnetic fields intertwine. This phenomenon occurs as the Sun undergoes a magnetic field reversal approximately every 11 years, triggering heightened solar activity including sunspots, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections. Professor Carol Mandel, ESA's Director of Science, heralded the discovery as 'humanity's first glimpse into the Sun's deepest mysteries." Mission Breakthrough And Future Prospects Launched in 2020 at a cost of $1.3 billion, the Solar Orbiter reached a viewing angle of 15 degrees below the solar equator by March 2025, an achievement unattainable from Earth. By 2029, the spacecraft is expected to achieve a 33-degree inclination, promising even more comprehensive polar observations. Professor Sami Solanki of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research confirmed that the findings align closely with existing computer models of the Sun's magnetic field. The Sun's Magnetic Dance Unlike Earth, the Sun is a plasma sphere with varying rotation speeds; its equator rotates every 26 days, while the poles rotate roughly every 33 days. This differential rotation causes the magnetic field to contort, eventually flipping the Sun's magnetic poles. Professor Lucy Green of University College London, who has been part of the mission since 2005, explained that the Sun's magnetic field governs its activity cycles. A solar minimum, when magnetic activity is at its lowest, is predicted within the next five to six years. Scientists hope that data from Solar Orbiter will improve forecasting of such phenomena. Overcoming Past Limitations Although NASA's Ulysses probe passed over the solar poles in the 1990s, it lacked imaging capability. The Solar Orbiter is the first mission to provide both magnetic data and visual imagery, revolutionising solar science and offering critical insights into space weather that can affect Earth. First Published: June 12, 2025, 14:23 IST Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Observer
05-07-2025
- Science
- Observer
First-Ever Images of Sun's South Pole Released by European Mission
Spacecraft and specialized telescopes have been studying the sun closely for decades, probing the secrets of its spots, flares and corona. But neither human nor robotic eyes had properly seen the north or south poles of the sun. The European Space Agency recently released the first clear images of the sun's south pole, which were captured in late March by its Solar Orbiter spacecraft. 'It's the first time ever that humanity has had an image of the poles of the sun,' said Carole Mundell, director of science for the European Space Agency. 'It's a wonderful achievement.' Scientists have had vague glimpses of the sun's poles before. However, those side-on views have been akin to 'looking through grass,' said Mathew Owens, a space physicist at the University of Reading in England, who added that it had been hard to work out what was happening at the poles and how they differed from other regions of the star. By studying its polar extremes, scientists hope to gain new insights into the sun and how it behaves. And the best is yet to come — later this year, humans will get our first images of the sun's north pole from Solar Orbiter. The $550 million Solar Orbiter, launched Feb. 10, 2020, into an orbit that caused it to fly by Venus repeatedly. These encounters give the spacecraft a gravitational kick, enabling it to push itself out of the plane of orbit that the planets follow around the sun and into a higher angle to view the poles. In March, after four flybys of Venus, the spacecraft swooped about 32 million miles over the sun's south pole at an angle of about 17 degrees, enough to provide first-ever snapshots of what it looks like. 'We've never had this view before,' said Nour Rawafi, a project scientist for NASA's Parker Solar Probe mission, which is currently flying closer to the sun than any spacecraft in history. 'Seeing the poles clearly is really going to open a new window in trying to understand the solar atmosphere and the interior of the sun.' The images reveal a speckled pattern of magnetic activity at the pole, caused by huge ruptures in the sun's surface as magnetic fields pour in and out. — JONATHAN O'CALLAGHAN / NYT
Forbes
21-06-2025
- Science
- Forbes
ESA's Solar Orbiter Should Solve Mystery Of Sun's Outermost Atmosphere
ESA's Solar Orbiter mission will face the Sun from within the orbit of Mercury at its closest ... More approach. The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter mission recently stunned the world with the first-ever full images of our Sun's South pole, proving that this was going to be a mission like no other. Using an orbital gravity assist from the planet Venus, the Solar Orbiter mission spacecraft was able to maneuver into an orbit that has taken it to an angle 17 degrees below the Sun's equator. Over the coming years, the spacecraft will tilt its orbit even further, so the best views are yet to come, says ESA. The 1.2-billion-euro Solar Orbiter mission, with NASA participation, should finally help us understand the origin of the Sun's solar winds as well as our understanding of the Sun's poles. And arguably most importantly, it should solve the puzzle of why our star's outermost atmosphere, or corona, is heated to millions of degrees Kelvin and is thus so much hotter than the Sun's own surface. By contrast, our Sun's visible photosphere, or surface, averages only 5,500 degrees K. With Solar Orbiter, we are clearly seeing energy releases on the nano-flare scale, Daniel Mueller, a solar physicist and ESA project scientist for both ESA's SOHO and Solar Orbiter missions to the Sun, tells me in his office in The Netherlands. But the question is, would these nano-flares continue like that infinitely, or is there a certain lower limit to the production of these nano-flares, Mueller wonders. The puzzle is whether these nano-flares are enough to heat up the Sun's corona to the temperatures with which it is routinely measured. A Unique View Launched in 2020, from its highly elliptical orbit just inside Mercury's perihelion, the closest point in our innermost planet's solar orbit, the ESA spacecraft offers the best views yet of our own yellow dwarf star. We can see on scales down to about 200 kilometers on the Sun, which shows us a lot of dynamics of our star, says Mueller. And thanks to its newly tilted orbit around the Sun, the European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft is the first to image the Sun's poles from outside the ecliptic plane (the imaginary geometric plane in which our Earth orbits the Sun), says ESA. We observed the Sun's North pole at the end of this past April, says Mueller. But we passed the Southern pole first and then the Northern pole six weeks later, he says. At the moment, as seen from Earth, the Solar Orbiter is almost behind the Sun, so the data downlink has slowed to a trickle. But by early October, Mueller expects to have downloaded all the data from Solar Orbiter's Spring polar observations of the Sun. And within a matter of two to three months after the data is on the ground, the first scientific results will have been written up and submitted to journals for publication, says Mueller. These observations are also key to understanding the Sun's magnetic field and why it flips roughly every 11 years, coinciding with a peak in solar activity, says ESA. The spacecraft's instruments show that the Sun's South pole is a bit of a magnetic mess now, with both North and South polarity magnetic fields present, ESA notes. Ready To Flip Right now, there is not a clear dominant magnetic polarity, but a mix of the two, says Mueller. And that is exactly what you would expect to find during the maximum of the Sun's activity cycle, when the magnetic field is about to flip, he says. The real applications are for space weather predictions. Case in point, better space weather forecasting may have saved many of Elon Musk's 523 Starlink satellites that reentered Earth's atmosphere between 2020 and 2024. This period coincides with the rising phase of solar cycle 25, which has shown itself to be more intense than the previous solar cycle, the authors of a 2025 paper appearing in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences write. Our results indisputably show that satellites reenter faster with higher geomagnetic activity, the authors note. There was a big solar storm that caused the earth's upper Earth atmosphere to expand, so, the satellites experienced more drag, and therefore didn't make it to orbit, says Mueller. One option may have been simply to hold off on launches until this increased period of solar activity enabled a less risky geomagnetic environment in Earth's upper atmosphere. The hope is that the Solar Orbiter mission and other missions like it will lead to better and more reliable space weather predictions that could potentially save hundreds of millions of dollars in the commercial satellite industry. Solar Orbiter should do its share in solving both pure solar physics conundrums as well as in more practical applications like space weather. The good news is that the spacecraft still has plenty of fuel left. Our current funding goes until the end of 2026, but because we had a picture-perfect launch provided by United Launch Alliance and NASA, we saved a lot of fuel, says Mueller. So, the onboard fuel reserves are so large that we can keep going for a long time, he says.
Yomiuri Shimbun
19-06-2025
- Science
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Solar Orbiter Obtains 1st Images of the Sun's Poles
ESA & NASA / Solar Orbiter / PHI Team, J. Hirzberger (MPS) / Handout via Reuters A radiance map of the sun's south pole as recorded by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft is seen in this image released by the European Space Agency on June 11. The robotic Solar Orbiter spacecraft has obtained the first images ever taken of our sun's two poles as scientists seek a deeper understanding of Earth's host star, including its magnetic field, its 11-year cycle of activity and the solar wind. The European Space Agency on June 11 released images taken in March using three of Solar Orbiter's onboard instruments. They show the sun's south pole from a distance of roughly 65 million kilometers, obtained at a period of maximum solar activity. Images of the north pole are still being transmitted by the spacecraft back to Earth. Solar Orbiter, developed by ESA in collaboration with the U.S. space agency NASA, was launched in 2020 from Florida. Until now, all the views of the sun have come from the same vantage point — looking face-on toward its equator from the plane on which Earth and the solar system's other planets orbit, called the ecliptic plane. Solar Orbiter used a slingshot flyby around Venus in February to get out of this plane to view the sun from up to 17 degrees below the solar equator. Future slingshot flybys will provide an even better view, at beyond 30 degrees. 'The best is still to come. What we have seen is just a first quick peek,' said solar physicist Sami Solanki of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, who heads the scientific team for the spacecraft's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager instrument. 'The spacecraft observed both poles, first the south pole, then the north pole,' Solanki said. Solar Orbiter is gathering data on phenomena including the sun's magnetic field, its activity cycle and the solar wind, a relentless high-speed flow of charged particles emanating from the sun's outermost atmospheric layer that fills interplanetary space. 'We are not sure what we will find, and it is likely we will see things that we didn't know about before,' said solar physicist Hamish Reid of University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory, coprincipal investigator of Solar Orbiter's Extreme Ultraviolet Imager instrument. The sun is a ball of hot electrically charged gas that, as it moves, generates a powerful magnetic field, which flips from south to north and back again every 11 years in what is called the solar cycle. The magnetic field drives the formation of sunspots, cooler regions on the solar surface that appear as dark blotches. At the cycle's beginning, the sun has fewer sunspots. Their number increases as the cycle progresses, before starting all over again. 'What we have been missing to really understand this [solar cycle] is what is actually happening at the top and bottom of the sun,' Reid said. The sun's diameter is about 1.4 million kilometers, more than 100 times wider than Earth. ESA & NASA / Solar Orbiter / PHI, EUI & SPICE Teams / Handout via Reuters Eight views of the sun's south pole obtained on March 16–17, 2025, by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) and Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instruments are seen in this image released by the European Space Agency on June 11. 'Whilst the Earth has a clear north and south pole, the Solar Orbiter measurements show both north and south polarity magnetic fields are currently present at the south pole of the sun. This happens during the maximum in activity of the solar cycle, when the sun's magnetic field is about to flip. In the coming years, the sun will reach solar minimum, and we expect to see a more orderly magnetic field around the poles of the sun,' Reid said. 'We see in the images and movies of the polar regions that the sun's magnetic field is chaotic at the poles at the [current] phase of the solar cycle — high solar activity, cycle maximum,' Solanki said. The sun is located about 149 million kilometers from our planet. 'The data that Solar Orbiter obtains during the coming years will help modelers in predicting the solar cycle. This is important for us on Earth because the sun's activity causes solar flares and coronal mass ejections which can result in radio communication blackouts, destabilize our power grids, but also drive the sensational auroras,' Reid said. 'Solar Orbiter's new vantage point out of the ecliptic will also allow us to get a better picture of how the solar wind expands to form the heliosphere, a vast bubble around the sun and its planets,' Reid added. A previous spacecraft, Ulysses, flew over the solar poles in the 1990s. 'Ulysses, however, was blind in the sense that it did not carry any optical instruments — telescopes or cameras — and hence could only sense the solar wind passing the spacecraft directly, but could not image the sun,' Solanki said.
