The European Space Agency released a stunning video showcasing the sun's intense activity captured by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft. The video highlights the sun's increased solar flares, their evolution, and the changing distance of the spacecraft from the sun.
Our closest star has been delivering quite a show in recent months. The sun is spitting out fantastic flares, hurling solar material at Earth and triggering spectacular events. A video from the European Space Agency shows how the sun’s activity has ramped up over the last few years as it careened toward maximum solar activity. ESA ’s Solar Orbiter mission—operated in collaboration with NASA —contributed the pictures.
Solar Orbiter is a spacecraft launched in 2020 on a mission to take close-up images of the sun, snap the sun’s polar regions and study the solar wind. The video kicks off with observations from early 2022 and runs through mid-2024. The sun’s outer atmosphere, called the corona, appears in yellow. The blue circles represent solar flares captured by the orbiter’s Spectrometer/Telescope for Imaging X-rays instrument. Stronger flares are shown as larger circles. The clinking sound accompanying each flare is a sonification, a way of representing data through audio. The soundtrack changes depending on the flare and Solar Orbiter’s distance from the sun.The sun seems to grow and shrink throughout the video. This is a product of Solar Orbiter’s path through space. It makes a close approach every six months. “We can see this in the video from the spacecraft's perspective, with the sun moving closer and farther over the course of each year,” said Klaus Nielsen, ESA Solar Orbiter project scientist, in a statement on Jan. 3. “In the sonification, this is represented by the low background humming that loudens as the sun gets closer and becomes quieter as it moves further away.” The video shows just how intense the sun’s activity has gotten. Our star goes through a solar cycle
Solar Orbiter Sun Solar Flares Spacecraft ESA NASA
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