The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter returned the most detailed images yet captured of the sun's surface (beating its own previous best by about 3m km). Above, the sun in ultraviolet.
The images were taken when Solar Orbiter was less than 74 million kilometres from the Sun; being so close meant each high-resolution image only covers a small portion of the Sun. To obtain the full-disc views showcased in the video, 25 images were stitched together like a mosaic. The Sun has a diameter of around 8000 pixels in the full mosaics, revealing an extraordinary amount of detail.
See also these images using data from other wavelengths. Below, a magnetic map of the Sun.
And here's a video presentation; the zoom-in is amazing.
The images, taken on March 22, 2023, and released Wednesday, showcase different dynamic aspects of the sun, including the movements of its magnetic field and the glow of the ultrahot solar corona, or outer atmosphere.The spacecraft relied on two of its six imaging instruments, including the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager, or EUI, and Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager, or PHI, to capture the images from 46 million miles (74 million kilometers) away.The Solar Orbiter, a joint mission between the European Space Agency and NASA that launched in February 2020, orbits the sun from an average distance of 26 million miles (42 million kilometers). Missions like Solar Orbiter and NASA's Parker Solar Probe are helping to answer key questions about the golden orb, such as what fuels its stream of charged particles called the solar wind and why the corona is so much hotter than the sun's surface.
