The ESA Solar Orbiter has provided a stunning new look at the Sun by combining 25 high-resolution images.
This mosaic offers a detailed view of the solar surface, including sunspots and granules, enhancing our understanding of solar dynamics.
Solar Orbiter’s Journey and Discoveries
Our Sun, the star at the center of our solar system, has long been a subject of fascination and study, observed through ground-based telescopes and space-based observatories. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter has been making its way closer to the Sun, capturing images with unprecedented clarity.
In March of 2023, the spacecraft reached its halfway point and took 25 individual images, which were later stitched together to create a stunningly high-resolution mosaic. This detailed image allows viewers to zoom in and observe individual granules on the Sun’s surface, known as the solar photosphere.
The Sun’s Massive Influence and Characteristics
While the Sun is massive compared to Earth, it is fairly average in size when compared to other stars. It powers life on our planet through nuclear fusion, a process deep in its core where hydrogen atoms fuse into helium, releasing immense energy in the form of heat and light.
Like other stars, the Sun is a giant sphere of electrically charged gas, with a surface temperature of approximately 5,500°C. Spanning a staggering 1.39 million kilometers across and sitting at an average distance of 150 million kilometers from Earth, it contains 99% of the Solar System’s total mass. This immense mass creates the gravitational pull that has held planets, asteroids, and comets in orbit for 4.6 billion years.
The Mission and Capabilities of ESA’s Solar Orbiter
Without a doubt it is the most prominent astronomical object to grace our skies and so it is no surprise it has been the target of many, many studies. ESA’s Solar Orbiter is one of those space-based observatories that has started to unveil some of the mysteries of our nearest star. It was launched in February 2020 and was designed to capture images of the Sun’s poles along with measuring its magnetic fields and the solar wind. The orbit followed by Solar Orbiter is very specific following an elliptical orbit that takes it to within 42 million km of the Sun.
Advanced Imaging Techniques Unveil Sun’s Details
On board Solar Orbiter are instruments to probe the dynamics of the Sun. The most exciting of these are those designed to observe the Sun directly and include the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) and the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) which when combined with other onboard instruments can create some fabulously high-resolution images. With Solar Orbiter already halfway to the Sun ESA has released a stunning new image of our nearest star derived from data from both EUI and PHI.
At the time the images were taken, Solar Orbiter was 74 million km away from the Sun (Mercury is approximately 50 million km away) and was too close to be able to capture one image of the whole Sun. Instead, 25 images were taken over a few hours and then stitched together to create the mosaic that has just been released. The finished result can be seen here and has a resolution of around 175 km per pixel. Previous observations have gone deeper for example the Gregor Solar Telescope on Tenerife has achieved a resolution of just 50 km per pixel but this was only ever of a small section of the Sun.
Large mosaics were never possible due to the turbulence in the atmosphere making it impossible to stitch sufficient images together. The image is stunning. If you zoom in you can see the pattern of granulation all over the Sun’s photosphere and even a few sunspots in super high resolution.
Adapted from an article originally published on Universe Today.
Explore Further: Solar Orbiter’s Stunning New Views of the Sun Reveal Hidden Dynamics
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1 Comment
Also seen is a distinct tick-tac-toe pattern – and, putting images together means images taken at different times.