Stunning new Solar Orbiter images capture explosive activity on the sun
A new series of images from the Solar Orbiter spacecraft is giving scientists the clearest view yet of the sun's volatile lower atmosphere-and unlocking critical insights into the forces behind solar eruptions and space weather.
On March 9, 2025, while nearly 48 million miles from the sun, the Solar Orbiter spacecraft was oriented to capture a sweeping view of the solar surface, the European Space Agency noted. Using a 5x5 grid, its Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) took six high-resolution images and two wide-angle views at each position. The result was a massive mosaic of 200 images, stitched together to create the widest high-resolution image of the Sun ever captured.
"What you see is the Sun's million-degree hot atmosphere, called the corona, as it looks in ultraviolet light," the ESA explained.
Astronomers say these images reveal the "middle zone" of the sun, between its stable surface and its erupting outer corona, where magnetic fields twist and plasma eruptions begin.
The visible surface of the sun, called the photosphere, is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Space.com. Strangely, the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere-the corona-is much hotter, regularly reaching between 1.8 million and 3.6 million degrees. In some cases, it can spike as high as 72 million degrees, according to NASA.
This superheated outer layer is made of plasma, a hot, electrically charged gas. It's also where powerful solar events like flares and eruptions begin. Scientists hope the data will eventually help explain why the sun's outer atmosphere is millions of degrees hotter than its surface-one of solar physics' biggest mysteries.
The images come just as Solar Orbiter enters its closest pass of the sun to date. Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. A team from University College London is using the data to better understand how solar storms develop. Understanding solar storms is key for improving space weather forecasting on Earth. The same activity that lights up the aurora can also interfere with satellites, GPS systems and power grids.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
‘NASA Live' will show spacewalks, rocket launches on Netflix
(NewsNation) — NASA and Netflix have announced a partnership to stream NASA+'s live programming on the streaming service for all subscription members. With NASA+, Netflix users can see views of Earth from the International Space Station (ISS), astronaut spacewalks and rocket launches. NASA: 'Fireball' seen across Southeast US is meteor Rebecca Sirmons, the general manager of NASA+, said, 'Our Space Act of 1958 calls on us to share our story of space exploration with the broadest possible audience. Together, we're committed to a Golden Age of Innovation and Exploration — inspiring new generations — right from the comfort of their couch or in the palm of their hand from their phone.' Starting this summer, there will be NASA+ live feeds that are available on Netflix's homepage. If you don't have Netflix, you can still watch NASA+ on the NASA app and The point of this partnership is to give viewers another way to watch these live feeds. Spaceship with Indian, Polish, Hungarian astronauts docks at ISS NASA+ also has a partnership with Amazon Prime Video, according to The Hollywood Reporter. NASA+ was originally launched in 2023 and streams rocket launches, mission coverage, spacewalks and live footage of the Earth, among other programming. More detailed schedules for NASA+ on Netflix will be released closer to launch day. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
It's summer but the Earth is extra far from the sun; Here's what that means
The Earth will reach its farthest point from the sun on Thursday, July 3, according to This event, known as aphelion, happens once per year typically around two weeks after the summer solstice in June. Although the Earth's distance from the Sun does not affect the seasons, aphelion does influence the length of summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Because Earth moves in an elliptical orbit around the sun, being further away means it travels slower along its orbit. This increases the time it takes to get from the solstice, the beginning of summer, to the equinox, the end of summer, effectively making the season longer in the Northern Hemisphere, according to On Thursday, Earth will be over 94.5 million miles away from the sun. On average the planet sits at 93 million miles away, according to A fake solar eclipse? European satellites photograph 'eclipse-making' mission Strawberries on the brain? This full moon could be the treat for you Here are 10 NASA missions that could be grounded under Trump's 2026 budget Selfie on Mars? Here's how NASA caught a new glimpse of the Martian surface New research says our universe only has a quinvigintillion years left, so make 'em good ones Read the original article on MassLive.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Astronomers see the 1st stars dispel darkness 13 billion years ago at 'Cosmic Dawn'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Astronomers have used ground-based telescopes for the first time to peer back 13 billion years in time to observe the universe when the first stars first lifted the cosmic darkness. This period, around 800 million years after the Big Bang, is known as "Cosmic Dawn," and it remains one of the most mysterious and important periods in the evolution of the universe. This new glimpse of Cosmic Dawn comes courtesy of the Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS), an array of telescopes located high in the Atacama Desert region of Northern Chile. The primary mission of CLASS is to observe the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), a cosmic fossil left over from an event just after the Big Bang. "People thought this couldn't be done from the ground. Astronomy is a technology-limited field, and microwave signals from the Cosmic Dawn are famously difficult to measure," team leader and Johns Hopkins professor of physics and astronomy, Tobias Marriage, said in a statement. "Ground-based observations face additional challenges compared to space. Overcoming those obstacles makes this measurement a significant achievement." Prior to around 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the infant universe would have seemed like a pretty dull place, visually at least. That is because during this period, light was unable to travel freely due to the fact that photons were endlessly scattered by free electrons. This situation changed when the universe had expanded and cooled enough to allow electrons to bond with protons and create the first neutral atoms of hydrogen. Suddenly, photons were free to travel unimpeded through the cosmos as the universe instantly went from transparent to opaque. This "first light" is seen today as the CMB. When the first stars formed, their intense radiation ripped electrons from neutral hydrogen once again, an event called "reionization," turning the universe dark again during an epoch known as the "Cosmic Dark Ages." The signal from Cosmic Dawn hunted by CLASS comes from the fingerprint of the universe's first stars within the CMB. This comes in the form of polarized microwave light around a million times fainter than standard cosmic microwaves. As you may imagine, after travelling to us for 13 billion years and more, the light from Cosmic Dawn is extremely faint. Trying to detect this polarized microwave light from Earth is extremely difficult because it is drowned out by natural events such as atmospheric changes and temperature fluctuations, as well as being obscured by human-made signals like radio waves, radar and satellite signals. Thus, this cosmic radiation is usually only hunted from space by satellites like NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and the European Space Agency's Planck space telescope. That was until CLASS. The team behind this new research compared data from CLASS with observations from Planck and WMAP. This allowed them to identify sources of interference and hone in on a signal from polarized microwave light in the CMB. Polarization describes what happens when waves are oriented in the same direction. This can happen when light hits an object and scatters off it. "When light hits the hood of your car and you see a glare, that's polarization. To see clearly, you can put on polarized glasses to take away glare," said team member Yunyang Li, who was a PhD student at Johns Hopkins and then a fellow at the University of Chicago while this research was being conducted. "Using the new common signal, we can determine how much of what we're seeing is cosmic glare from light bouncing off the hood of the Cosmic Dawn, so to speak." What this team specifically aims to measure with CLASS is the probability of a photon from the CMB encountering an electron ripped free of neutral hydrogen by the universe's first stars and being scattered. Doing this should help scientists better define signals from the CMB and the initial glow of the Big Bang, thus enabling them to paint a clear picture of the infant cosmos. "Measuring this reionization signal more precisely is an important frontier of cosmic microwave background research," WMAP space mission team leader Charles Bennett said. "For us, the universe is like a physics lab. Better measurements of the universe help to refine our understanding of dark matter and neutrinos, abundant but elusive particles that fill the universe. "By analyzing additional CLASS data going forward, we hope to reach the highest possible precision that's achievable." Related Stories: — How dark energy could relieve 'Hubble tension' and galaxy headaches — Hubble trouble or Superbubble? Astronomers need to escape the 'supervoid' to solve cosmology crisis — 'Our understanding of the universe may be incomplete': James Webb Space Telescope data suggests we need a 'new cosmic feature' to explain it all This new research is built upon earlier work that saw CLASS map 75% of the night sky over Earth as it makes precise measurements of the polarization of the CMB. "No other ground-based experiment can do what CLASS is doing," said Nigel Sharp, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Astronomical Sciences, supporter of CLASS since 2010. "The CLASS team has greatly improved measurement of the cosmic microwave polarization signal, and this impressive leap forward is a testament to the scientific value produced by NSF's long-term support."The team's research was published on Wednesday (June 2) in The Astrophysical Journal.
