Solar Orbiters objective is to study the Sun up close and from high latitudes, providing the very first pictures of the Suns poles and investigating the heliosphere. Credit: ESA/ATG medialabStunning close-up views of the Sun expose its dynamic extreme temperatures and magnetic structures, captured by ESAs Solar Orbiter in cooperation with NASAs Parker Solar Probe.This otherworldly, ever-changing landscape (see video below) is what the Sun looks like up close. the European Space Agencys Solar Orbiter recorded the transition from the Suns lower atmosphere to the much hotter outer corona. The hair-like structures are made from charged gas (plasma), following magnetic field lines emerging from the Suns interior.The brightest areas are around one million degrees Celsius, while cooler material looks dark as it takes in radiation.This video was tape-recorded on September 27, 2023, by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument on Solar Orbiter. At the time, the spacecraft was at roughly a third of the Earths distance from the Sun, heading for a closest technique of 27 million miles (43 million km) on October 7, 2023. On the very same day that this video was tape-recorded, NASAs Parker Solar Probe skimmed just 4.51 million miles (7.26 million kilometers) from the solar surface area. Instead of straight imaging the Sun, Parker measures particles and the electromagnetic field in the Suns corona and in the solar wind. This was a best chance for the 2 objectives to collaborate, with ESA-led Solar Orbiters remote-sensing instruments observing the source region of the solar wind that would consequently stream previous Parker Solar Probe.Spot the Moss, Spicules, Eruption, and RainLower left corner: An appealing feature visible throughout this film is the bright gas that makes fragile, lace-like patterns throughout the Sun. This is called coronal moss. It usually appears around the base of large coronal loops that are too hot or too rare to be seen with the chosen instrument settings.On the solar horizon: Spires of gas, called spicules, rise from the Suns chromosphere. These can reach up to a height of 10,000 km (6,200 miles). Center around 0:22: A little eruption in the center of the field of view, with cooler material being raised upwards before mainly falling back down. Do not be fooled by the usage of small here: this eruption is larger than Earth!Center- left around 0:30: Cool coronal rain (probably less than 10,000 ° C/ 18,000 ° F) looks dark against the intense background of large coronal loops (around one million degrees Celsius). The rain is made of higher-density clumps of plasma that fall back towards the Sun under the influence of gravity.This is the very same video as above but without the annotations. Credit: ESA & & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team
