Solar Orbiter Shows Closest-ever Pics of Sun

The Sun revealed in the closest photos ever taken of our parent star.

The Solar orbiter just produced the closest pictures ever taken of the Sun, revealing our parent star in stunning detail.

These are the first images from the Solar Orbiter released to the public. This joint mission from NASA and the ESA launched on February 9 of this year, and it made its first close pass of the Sun near the middle of June.

This animation shows a series of views of the Sun captured with the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on ESA/NASA’s Solar Orbiter on May 30, 2020. They show the Sun’s appearance at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, which is in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Images at this wavelength reveal the upper atmosphere of the Sun, the corona, with a temperature of more than a million degrees. Image credit: Solar Orbiter/EUI Team (ESA & NASA); CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL

“These unprecedented pictures of the Sun are the closest we have ever obtained. These amazing images will help scientists piece together the Sun’s atmospheric layers, which is important for understanding how it drives space weather near the Earth and throughout the solar system,” said Holly Gilbert, NASA project scientist for the mission at Goddard Space Flight Center.

I Traveled 150 Million Kilometers and Forgot the Marshmallows?

The current global pandemic led to the shutdown of operations at the European Space Operations center (ESOC) in Germany in the midst of testing.

On June 1 and 6, the spacecraft passed through the ion and dust tails of comet ATLAS, which recently shattered while orbiting the Sun.