Latest news with #SolarOrbiter
Forbes
28-04-2025
- Science
- Forbes
In Photos: NASA Mission Sees Two Solar Eclipses From Space
A solar eclipse on April 27, 2025, as seen only by NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory. When is the next solar eclipse? Yesterday and today — but they were not reported in advance. Why? They were only in space and only by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The event, the first of which occurred during the new moon on Sunday, Apr. 27, 2025, was captured in various images by the spacecraft, which it sent back to Earth minutes later. Called a "lunar transit" by NASA, the eclipse was partial, with up to 23% of the sun's surface being blocked by the moon on Sunday and just 2% on Monday. According to NASA, there will be a huge 62% eclipse on July 25. A solar eclipse on April 27, 2025, as seen only by NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory. Whether you see an eclipse is entirely down to your location in space. After all, the moon always projects a shadow in space — it's whether you travel through that shadow, in a spacecraft or on Earth, that matters. Launched in 2010, SDO sends back real-time high-resolution images of the sun in various wavelengths, focusing on sunspots, solar flares and coronal mass ejections. The aim is to help scientists determine the causes of severe space weather, but the images are publicly available. SDO orbits Earth in a geosynchronous orbit, about 35,789 km (22,238 miles) above, with its orbital path calculated to avoid eclipses as much as possible. After all, it's there to observe the solar surface. Its point of view of the moon is similar to Earth's, but not quite the same, as evidenced by the fact that it occasionally sees an eclipse that we on Earth do not. A solar eclipse on April 27, 2025, as seen only by NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory. Since it has no atmosphere, SDO shows the moon's edge sharply. As a consequence, there are mountains visible on the limb. This rough profile of the moon was partly the cause of minor issues during the total solar eclipse in North America on Apr. 8, 20204, when calculations revealed that the path of totality was incorrect. This isn't the first time an eclipse has been seen by SDO or by astronauts in space. Several Apollo astronauts witnessed an eclipse of the sun as they traveled to the moon. The eclipse images arrived the same week the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter spacecraft sent back one of the most detailed images of the sun's corona. It shows the sun's hotter outer atmosphere, its corona, which is the source of the solar wind — a stream of charged particles coming at Earth from the sun — which in turn causes space weather. The path of totality sweeps near Iceland and over Spain on August 12, 2026. The next solar eclipse visible from Earth will occur on Sept. 21, 2025, but will only be seen from New Zealand, the South Pacific and Antarctica. Observers of a partial eclipse must always wear solar eclipse glasses to avoid the threat of blindness, while all cameras and telescopes will require solar filters. The next total solar eclipse — the best kind, during which the moon momentarily blocks out all of the sun, allowing its corona to be seen with the naked eye — is on Aug. 12, 2026. It will be seen from within a narrow path of totality that passes through eastern Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain, with totality lasting just over two minutes. The next total solar eclipse in the contiguous U.S. will occur on Aug. 22, 2044. Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
BBC News
27-04-2025
- Science
- BBC News
Solar Orbiter: ESA reveals most detailed picture of the Sun yet
Space experts have revealed what they say is the most detailed picture of the Sun ever was taken by the Solar Orbiter, a satellite launched five years ago by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Nasa. Its mission is to take images of the Sun closer than any spacecraft has done hope that the craft will also help answer some big questions, including how solar winds are formed and what heats the upper layers of the Sun's atmosphere to such high temperatures. What's happened? A number of photos taken by the Solar Orbiter in early March were joined together to produce the widest high-resolution view of the Sun fact a whopping 200 individual images, taken by the Solar Orbiter at a distance of around 48 million miles from the Sun, make up the final shows what the Sun looks like in UV light at a wavelength far beyond what our eyes can see - revealing hot plasma, made up of charged particles, caught in the Sun's magnetic also shows glowing coronal loops which often appear above active dark line across the Sun is called a filament, and made of relatively cool material (still around 10,000 °C).According to the ESA, they appear as dark regions because they absorb radiation released below it. When seen side-on, filaments are called prominences. They can extend for many thousands of miles and can last for days or even months. What is the Solar Orbiter? The Solar Orbiter is a joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and was launched in February 2020, and started sending back images five months to the ESA, it is the most complex scientific laboratory ever to have been sent to the Sun, taking images of our star from closer than any spacecraft also the first mission to look at its polar regions, and scientists hope that it will help us to better understand and predict periods of stormy space Solar Orbiter has ten instruments on board which allow it to observe the unpredictable solar surface, its hot outer atmosphere and changes in the solar wind.
Forbes
27-04-2025
- Science
- Forbes
Solar Orbiter Sends Back Jaw-Dropping Image Of Sun's Corona
The sun's million-degree hot atmosphere, called the corona, as it looks in ultraviolet light, taken ... More by ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft on March 9, 2025. The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter spacecraft — launched in February 2020 and taking the first-ever images of the sun at close range — has sent back one of the most detailed images of our star. The widest high-resolution view of the sun so far was assembled from 200 images taken on March 9, 2025, while Solar Orbiter was about 48 million miles (77 million kilometers) from the sun. The sun is 93 million miles (148 million kilometers) from Earth. It shows the sun's hotter outer atmosphere, its corona (crown), the source of the solar wind — a stream of charged particles coming at Earth from the sun — and the space weather that causes geomagnetic storms and aurora. The image captures only ultraviolet — electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths shorter than visible light and invisible to the human eye. A composite of the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. (Photo by: VW Pics/Universal Images Group ... More via Getty Images) The sun's corona is always in the sky, but it's overwhelmed by the sun's photosphere, which is a million times brighter. However, the corona's temperature is around 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million degrees Celsius), 150 times hotter than the photosphere. Only during the brief 'totality' phase of a total solar eclipse — which lasts only a few minutes and only from a narrow path across Earth's surface — can the corona be glimpsed with the naked eye when it is seen as a halo of whitish light around the moon's silhouette. The brevity of an eclipse makes it difficult for solar physicists to study the corona. However, live images of the sun are streamed back to Earth in real time by NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory. This animation shows how Solar Orbiter obtains its high-resolution full Sun views. Solar Orbiter has six ultraviolet telescopes taking the first observations from close to the sun. Its Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) camera captured six images at high resolution and two wide-angle views to create 200 individual images across a 5 x 5 grid. The images were then stitched together to create a giant mosaic. It can be downloaded in spectacular 12544 × 12544 pixels (157 megapixels) quality from the ESA website. It comes the day after the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope — the world's largest solar telescope — on top of the Haleakala volcano in Hawaii produced a spectacular first image of sunspots on the sun. ESA's Solar Orbiter The shape of the corona changes shape throughout the 11-year solar cycle, during which the sun's magnetic activity waxes and wanes between 'solar minimum' and 'solar maximum. Solar Orbiter's image comes as the sun is in its "solar maximum" period, which scientists at NOAA and NASA think began in October 2024. Solar Orbiter's image is essential because solar scientists need to understand what processes on the sun — and chiefly in its corona — cause geomagnetic disturbances on Earth so they can predict them, thus protecting critical infrastructure on Earth and in space. The path of totality sweeps near Iceland and over Spain on August 12, 2026. The next total solar eclipse is on Aug. 12, 2026. It will be seen from within a narrow path of totality that passes through eastern Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain. Totality will last about two minutes. On Aug. 2, 2027, a totality lasting over six minutes will be seen from within a path passing through southern Spain, northern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The next total solar eclipse in the contiguous U.S. will occur on Aug. 22, 2044. Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Stunning new Solar Orbiter images capture explosive activity on the sun
A new series of images from the Solar Orbiter spacecraft is giving scientists the clearest view yet of the sun's volatile lower atmosphere-and unlocking critical insights into the forces behind solar eruptions and space weather. On March 9, 2025, while nearly 48 million miles from the sun, the Solar Orbiter spacecraft was oriented to capture a sweeping view of the solar surface, the European Space Agency noted. Using a 5x5 grid, its Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) took six high-resolution images and two wide-angle views at each position. The result was a massive mosaic of 200 images, stitched together to create the widest high-resolution image of the Sun ever captured. "What you see is the Sun's million-degree hot atmosphere, called the corona, as it looks in ultraviolet light," the ESA explained. Astronomers say these images reveal the "middle zone" of the sun, between its stable surface and its erupting outer corona, where magnetic fields twist and plasma eruptions begin. The visible surface of the sun, called the photosphere, is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Strangely, the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere-the corona-is much hotter, regularly reaching between 1.8 million and 3.6 million degrees. In some cases, it can spike as high as 72 million degrees, according to NASA. This superheated outer layer is made of plasma, a hot, electrically charged gas. It's also where powerful solar events like flares and eruptions begin. Scientists hope the data will eventually help explain why the sun's outer atmosphere is millions of degrees hotter than its surface-one of solar physics' biggest mysteries. The images come just as Solar Orbiter enters its closest pass of the sun to date. Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. A team from University College London is using the data to better understand how solar storms develop. Understanding solar storms is key for improving space weather forecasting on Earth. The same activity that lights up the aurora can also interfere with satellites, GPS systems and power grids.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Rare Isotope of Helium Seen Blasting From a Hole in The Sun
A giant, gaping hole that opened up in the Sun's atmosphere has been identified as the source of a surprising abundance of a rare isotope of helium. In late October 2023, the Sun was recorded belching out a simply enormous amount of helium-3 – the largest amount yet ever seen coming out of the Solar System's central star. After conducting an investigation, astronomers traced the source back to a jet launched from the edge of a coronal hole as part of a rare solar eruption that was packed only with lighter elements. "This rare isotope, which is lighter than the more common helium-4 by just one neutron, is scarce in our Solar System – found at a ratio of about one helium-3 ion per 2,500 helium-4 ions," explains astrophysicist Radoslav Bučík of the Southwest Research Institute in the US. "However, solar jets appear to preferentially accelerate 3He to high speeds or energies, likely due to its unique charge-to-mass ratio." Helium-4 is by far the most common isotope of helium. It makes up around a quarter of all the normal matter in the Universe by mass. Most of the helium-3 and helium-4 abundant throughout the Universe is thought to have formed in the moments after the Big Bang. Of the two, the smaller isotope is way less abundant. Typically, helium-3 makes up around 0.002 percent of the solar wind. Solar jets can boost helium-3 to around 10,000 times its usual concentration in the solar atmosphere. On 24 and 25 October 2023, however, ESA and NASA's Solar Orbiter observatory detected helium-3 whooshing away from the Sun in concentrations 180,000 times greater than its usual concentration in the Solar atmosphere, to higher speeds than most of the other material in the outflow. On those days, solar observatories recorded the presence of a large coronal hole on the face of the Sun. Coronal holes are temporary regions in the solar corona, or atmosphere, where a gap in the magnetic field forms. They can't be seen in visible light, but in ultraviolet and X-ray images they appear quite dark. This is because the plasma in these patches is cooler and less dense than the surrounding material. With the magnetic fields leakier than usual, the solar wind can escape more readily, pushing charged particles out into space at high speeds. On the fringes of this particular coronal hole, Bučík and his colleagues identified a highly collimated plasma flow known as a solar jet as the source of the solar particle event that included the high abundance of helium-3. "Surprisingly, the magnetic field strength in this region was weak, more typical of quiet solar areas rather than active regions," Bučík says. "This finding supports earlier theories suggesting that helium-3 enrichment is more likely in weakly magnetized plasma, where turbulence is minimal." What's even more interesting about this particular jet is what else was in it. Solar particle events, in which particles are accelerated in or from the solar corona, can contain high concentrations of helium-3; but no matter the helium-3 contents, they typically contain high concentrations of other, heavier elements, from neon to iron. In the solar particle event of October 2023, iron hadn't increased significantly. Rather, the outflow had an abundance of elements such as carbon, nitrogen, silicon, and sulfur. Only 19 other solar particle events between 1999 and 2023 had similar chemical profiles. One possibility is that such events are rare. The other possibility is that they are fairly common, they're just usually pretty weak, and we're just not close enough to the Sun to see and measure them. Solar Orbiter sits roughly half way between Earth and the Sun, putting it in a comfortable position for capturing the wild variety of our closest star's mysterious outbursts. The research has been published in The Astrophysical Journal. There's Something Special About Meteors That Collide With Earth Our Galaxy's Neighbour Is Potentially Being Torn Apart by Its Bigger Sibling Astroforensics Reveals Surprise Twist in Death of Planet Swallowed by Star
