The Solar Orbiter completed its closest approach to the Sun yet and the images and videos are outstanding. And it's only getting started.
The spacecraft benefits from getting as close to the Sun as it can. But close approaches make the Solar Orbiter hot. The spacecraft’s first line of defence is its heat shield. It’s a multi-layered titanium device mounted on a honeycomb aluminum support, with carbon fibre skins designed to shed heat.
Between all that and the spacecraft’s body, there are another 28 layers of insulation. During this approach, its heat shield reached 500 Celsius Protected from the heat, the Solar Orbiter gathered a lot of data in its approach. Scientists need more time to work with it and understand it, but the images and videos are immediately engaging. One of the Sun’s features that caught everyone’s attention is the “space hedgehog.” The intriguing feature in the bottom third of the image, below the centre, has been nicknamed the solar hedgehog. No one knows exactly what it is or how it formed in the Sun’s atmosphere. The image was captured on 30 March 2022 by the Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager. Image Credit: ESA. Thanks to a bit of luck, the Sun put on a show during the Solar Orbiter’s approach. There were solar flares, and even a coronal mass ejection directed toward Earth. The Solar Orbiter has several remote sensing instruments, and scientists used them to forecast when the CME would reach Earth. They released their forecast on social media, and 18 hours later, Earthly observers were prepped to witness the resulting aurora. ESA released a graphic to explain how that played out. This graphic shows the Solar Orbiter’s role in detecting a CME and forecasting aurora when the CME struck Earth. On 10 March, a solar flare produced a coronal mass ejection directed at Earth. The cameras on the ESA/NASA mission SOHO recorded the event at around 22:06 UT. Solar Orbiter also observed it from its viewpoint about 67 million km from the Sun. Image Credit: Central Sun image: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI team; corona imagery: SOHO ; Solar Orbiter data: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/MAG & SWA Teams; Wind data: NASA/GSFC/Wind Aurora: J Bant Sexson IV The following video features images of the flares and the CME from three of the Solar Orbiter’s instruments: the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager, the Metis coronagraph, and SoloHI, the Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager. The awesome energy of the Sun can be readily appreciated in this sequence of images combining data from three instruments on the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft. It shows the way a solar flare on 25 March 2022, one day before the Solar Orbiter’s closest approach to the Sun, created a massive disturbance in the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the solar corona, leading to an enormous quantity of the gas being hurled into space in a coronal mass ejection.This graphic helps explain how the Solar Orbiter imaged the event with different instruments. Image Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EPD, EUI, RPW & STIX TeamsScientists are interested in the Sun’s poles because of how the Sun’s magnetic fields work. The magnetic fields create the powerful but temporary active regions on the Sun’s surface, and the fields get swept up and down to the poles before being swallowed by the Sun again. Scientists think that they somehow act as seeds for the next solar activity. The detailed images from the Sun’s south pole should help researchers understand how this all works. The ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft saw the Sun’s south pole on 30 March 2022, just four days after the spacecraft passed its closest point yet to the Sun. These images were recorded by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager at a wavelength of 17 nanometers. Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI, Metis and SoloHI Teams In the video of the Sun’s south pole, the lighter regions are mostly magnetic loops rising from the Sun’s interior. They’re called closed magnetic field lines because particles have difficulty crossing them. Instead, the particles become trapped and emit extreme ultraviolet radiation, which the Solar Orbiter’sThe darker regions in the video are where the Sun’s magnetic field lines are open. Instead of being closed to particles and trapping them, gasses can escape into space from these darker regions. That createsThe Orbiter also captured images and data of a March 2nd solar flare. The spacecraft’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager and the X-ray Spectrometer/Telescope instruments captured the flare as solar atmospheric gases reached temperatures of about one million degrees C and emitted extreme ultraviolet energy and x-rays.Image Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI & STIX Teams There’s a lot more to come from the Solar Orbiter. Over the next four years, the spacecraft will encounter Venus for a fourth and fifth time. Each time it does so, it’ll increase its inclination, giving it more direct views of the Sun’s poles. By December 2026, it’ll be orbitally inclined at 24 degrees, marking the start of the spacecraft’s “high-latitude” mission.Those high-latitude observations will give scientists line-of-sight views of the poles. The ESA says those views are crucial to disentangling the Sun’s complex magnetic polar environment. That could help unravel the mystery of the Sun’s“We are so thrilled with the quality of the data from our first perihelion,” said Daniel Müller, ESA Project Scientist for Solar Orbiter. “It’s almost hard to believe that this is just the start of the mission. We are going to be very busy indeed.”
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Solar On Pennsylvania Schools Doubles In 5 YearsSolar in Pennsylvania schools has doubled, according to a new report by Generation180. In another article, I interviewed
Read more »
India’s Hindustan Salts Tenders 1 Gigawatt Of Solar CapacityGovernment-owned Hindustan Salts has invited bids for the development of 1 gigawatt of solar power capacity.
Read more »
The dissipation of the solar nebula constrained by impacts and core cooling in planetesimals - Nature AstronomyImpact-related cooling of asteroids happened between 7.8 and 11.7 million years after Solar System formation due to dynamical forcing following the gas disk dissipation, an early giant planet instability, or a combination of the two.
Read more »
San Antonio's CPS Energy inks deal for 300 megawatts of solar powerThe move comes as the utility faces mounting pressure to phase out its J.K. Spruce coal plant, Bexar County's largest pollution source. SanAntonio SATX SanAntonioTX solarenergy Utilities Texas energy
Read more »
The benefits of solar-powered smart wearables | Digital TrendsImagine a life free from cables, power banks, and wall outlets. Solar wearables are here, but are they worth it?
Read more »
Dutch firm's Solar City Car could bring SEVs to new mainstream statusNetherlands-based Squad Mobility has officially launched the SQUAD Solar City Car after three years of development.
Read more »