Science and engineering are advancing by leaps and bounds, and there are new discoveries all the time that enable humanity to better understand the phenomena that surround us, including those that occur many light years away.
In recent days, the European Space Agency (ESA) revealed some impressive photographs that show the sun in more detail than ever. These are the highest resolution images that have been taken of this star to date.
Solar Orbiter is a satellite that is part of the solar observation project launched in February 2020. In addition, the project consists of six telescopes (EUI) that observe the sun and its surroundings and four instruments on-site to probe the environment around the satellite. Together, these instruments provide relevant information on space phenomena such as the solar wind.
Months after it was put into orbit, Solar Orbiter was already providing interesting data to scientists and revealed the presence of countless mini-eruptions on the orbit’s surface, known as bonfires. However, the images that were revealed in recent days are, without a doubt, the most impressive that this observation project has generated.
The sun like you’ve never seen it
The image you see is the highest resolution photograph that exists of the most important star in our solar system. It was taken 75 million kilometers away from Earth, that is, more or less halfway from our planet to the sun. If you look, in the upper right there is an image of the Earth placed there for scale reasons, so you can see the impressive size of the star.
The instrument responsible for this image is the EUI, whose capacity is such that 24 images were enough to have a complete picture of the sun. The final size was over 83 million pixels on a 9148 x 9112 pixel grid. This is ten times better resolution than a 4k television.
Happy perihelion day! Today we’re flying by the #Sun at about 48 million km, in one of many close perihelion passes throughout our mission. Here’s a taste of what’s to eat 👉 https://t.co/2vOYZ7aw92 #WeAreAllSolarOrbiters pic.twitter.com/Zczk7MJFt2
— ESA’s Solar Orbiter (@ESASolarOrbiter) March 26, 2022
The image was taken at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, that is, in the UV region of the electromagnetic spectrum, and reveals the outermost part of the sun’s atmosphere: the corona, which has a temperature of one million degrees Celsius.
Obviously, the image we show you in this article is not the almost 10,000 pixel one, but a much lower resolution version, but if you want to see the original image, it is available on the ESA website.
components of the sun
Another instrument on the satellite, SPICE, captured images of the sun at different wavelengths, making it possible to take pictures of the different layers of the sun’s atmosphere. The purple image represents hydrogen gas, which presented a temperature of 10,000ºC. The blue sphere corresponds to carbon at a temperature of 32,000ºC. The green image is oxygen, at a temperature of 320,000ºC and, finally, the yellow sphere represents neon at a temperature of 630,000 ºC.
Solar Orbiter’s mission is nowhere near over and scientists hope to solve several unknowns surrounding the star, such as why the corona is the hottest part of it, as well as studying solar flares.