The highest-resolution pictures of the sun’s surface yet are taken by Solar Orbiter.
Sunspots and continually flowing charged gas known as plasma are evident in the latest high-resolution photos of the sun’s visible surface that have been obtained by the Solar Orbiter mission. The pictures might offer heliophysicists fresh hints to help them discover the sun’s mysteries like never before.
The photos, which were revealed on Wednesday, were taken on March 22, 2023, and depict several dynamic features of the sun, such as the brightness of the ultrahot solar corona, or outer atmosphere, and the movements of its magnetic field.
The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) and Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), two of the spacecraft’s six imaging instruments, were used to take the pictures from a distance of 46 million miles (74 million kilometers).
Launched in February 2020, the Solar Orbiter is a cooperative European Space Agency and NASA mission that orbits the sun at an average distance of 26 million miles (42 million kilometers). Key concerns concerning the golden orb, like what drives the solar wind—a stream of charged particles—and why the corona is so much hotter than the sun’s surface are being addressed by missions like NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter.
In late December, Parker Solar Probe will try the closest spacecraft approach to the sun, while Solar Orbiter will capture the closest-ever photographs of the sun’s surface. While Solar Orbiter is equipped with a variety of equipment to share its unique observations of the solar, the Parker Solar Probe’s flight path will bring it too near to the sun to carry cameras and telescopes.
Additionally, the Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe are closely observing the sun at a perfect moment: during the height of its yearly cycle.
Daniel Müller, the project scientist for Solar Orbiter, said in a statement that “the magnetic field of the Sun is essential to comprehending the dynamic nature of our home star from the smallest to the largest scales.”
The Sun’s surface magnetic field and fluxes are beautifully depicted in these new high-resolution maps from Solar Orbiter’s PHI instrument. However, they are also essential for determining the magnetic field in the heated corona of the Sun, which our EUI instrument is observing.
Beautiful photographs of the sun.
The new photos collectively highlight the sun’s many intricate layers.
The highest-resolution complete pictures of the sun’s photosphere, or visible surface, were captured by the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager. The photosphere, which has scorching temperatures between 8,132 and 10,832 degrees Fahrenheit (4,500 and 6,000 degrees Celsius), is the source of almost all of the sun’s radiation.
Similar to how hot magma flows through the Earth’s mantle, hot plasma that ripples beneath the photosphere layer moves around in the sun’s convection zone.
The PHI instrument measures the speed and direction of the sun’s magnetic fields and maps the photosphere’s brightness.
Sunspots, which are holes on the solar surface, are apparent in the photosphere’s visible light image. The sun’s powerful and ever-changing magnetic fields are what propel these black areas, some of which are as huge as Earth or more. The patches are cooler than their surroundings and emit less light because they are areas where the sun’s magnetic field penetrates the surface.
A magnetic map, or magnetogram, that displays the concentrations of the sun’s magnetic field within its sunspot zones was also made possible by the PHI instrument. Convection normally aids in the transfer of heat from the sun’s interior to its surface, but when charged particles are compelled to follow the magnetic field lines that cluster around the sunspots, this process is upset.
Using a velocity map, or “tachogram,” scientists were also able to determine the direction and speed of material on the sun’s surface. Red parts depict what is traveling away from the spacecraft, and blue parts reveal movement toward Solar Orbiter.
While the plasma is really driven out around the sunspots, charged gas on the sun’s surface typically moves in unison with the sun’s axis of rotation.
In the meantime, the sun’s corona, which can reach 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million degrees Celsius), is seen by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager to help understand why it is so much hotter than the photosphere. The hot, luminous plasma is visible extending from the sunspot patches in the EUI’s image of the corona, which offers a glimpse of what happens above the photosphere.
Because Solar Orbiter was so close to the sun, it was necessary to spin the spacecraft after every picture in order to get a complete view of the sun’s face. Each image is therefore the product of a mosaic made up of twenty-five separate photographs.
Mark Miesch, a research scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that the photos show both small-scale surface patterns and large-scale elements like solar magnetism. The image release did not involve Miesch.
According to Miesch, a research scientist at the University of Colorado’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, “the closer we look, the more we see.” We must see the sun in all its beauty in order to comprehend the complex interactions between big and small, between churning flows and twisted magnetic fields. We are now closer than ever to achieving that goal thanks to these high-resolution photos from Solar Orbiter.
An active period for the sun.
The sun’s activity peaked in October, marking the end of its 11-year cycle, according to scientists from NOAA, NASA, and the worldwide Solar Cycle Prediction Panel. The sun changes from a tranquil to an active state during the top of the solar cycle when its magnetic poles reverse. By counting the number of sunspots that emerge on the sun’s surface, experts can monitor rising solar activity. And for the next year or so, the sun is predicted to stay active.
At a news conference in October, NOAA’s head of space weather monitoring, Elsayed Talaat, stated, “This announcement does not mean that this is the peak of solar activity we’ll see this solar cycle.” “The month that solar activity peaks on the sun will not be identified for months or years, even though the sun has reached the solar maximum period.”
Space weather that affects Earth is produced by solar activity, such as flares or coronal mass ejections. Large clouds of ionized gas known as plasma and magnetic fields known as coronal mass ejections are released from the sun’s outer atmosphere. Satellites in low-Earth orbit, GPS, aviation, and electric power grids can all be impacted by solar storms produced by the sun. In addition to causing radio outages, storm activity can also endanger crewed space missions.
The northern lights, also called the aurora borealis, and the southern lights, also called the aurora australis, are caused by the storms and dance around the poles of the Earth. The energized particles from coronal mass ejections interact with atmospheric gasses to produce various colors of light in the sky after they enter Earth’s magnetic field.
The Parker Solar Probe will approach the solar surface at a distance of 3.86 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) on December 24, the closest any man-made object has ever been to the sun. Because the probe will zoom near enough to sail through plasma plumes and solar eruptions associated to the sun, the flyby could aid scientists in studying the causes of space weather at the source.