Tag Archive for 'Solar Orbiter'

Photograph of the bottom half of the Sun, with a highlighted square region around the Sun’s south pole. Taken in ultraviolet light, the image shows the hot gas in the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, glowing yellow as it extends outwards in threads and loops from the Sun. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Solar Orbiter / EUI Team / D. Berghmans, ROB.

Solar Orbiter Images Sun’s Poles

Jun 12, 2025 by News Staff

Any image we have ever seen of the Sun was taken from around the Sun’s equator. This is because Earth, the other planets, and all other operational spacecraft...

This image of the Sun was taken with the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager on board the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission. Image credit: Auchère et al., doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202346039.

Solar Orbiter Captures Extreme-Ultraviolet Images of Sun’s Corona

Sep 6, 2023 by News Staff

Astronomers have used the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument onboard the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft in a new mode of operation to observe...

This image, taken with ESA’s Solar Orbiter on April 1, 2022, shows a partial section of the Sun with gas at 1 million degrees; the red paths correspond to some of the rain tracks analyzed by Antolin et al. Image credit: Patrick Antolin / ESA / Solar Orbiter / EUI / HRI.

Meteor-Like ‘Fireballs’ Spotted in Solar Corona

Jul 6, 2023 by News Staff

Coronal rain is the most dramatic display of cooling in the Sun’s corona. It corresponds to cool and dense clumps of plasma appearing over a timescale...

This image, obtained with the Metis instrument onboard ESA’s Solar Orbiter on March 25, 2022, shows the solar corona. Image credit: Telloni et al., doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac8104.

ESA’s Solar Orbiter Observes Magnetic Switchback in Sun’s Corona

Sep 12, 2022 by Natali Anderson

Solar switchbacks are sudden, large radial deflections of the solar wind magnetic field, previously revealed in interplanetary space by NASA spacecraft. This...

Solar Orbiter Sends Back Spectacular Images of the Sun

May 20, 2022 by News Staff

On March 26, 2022, the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft made the first of its close perihelion passages. The spacecraft flew closer to the Sun than the...

Solar Orbiter Reveals Sun’s Surface in Unprecedented Detail

May 5, 2022 by News Staff

One of the new images, taken by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) aboard the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft on March 7, 2022, is the highest resolution...

This image, taken by the Full Sun Imager (FSI) onboard the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter on February 15, 2022, shows the giant solar prominence eruption on the Sun. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Solar Orbiter / EUI.

Sun-Watching Space Observatories Spot Giant Solar Eruption

Feb 21, 2022 by News Staff

Astronomers using the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter and the NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft have captured the largest solar prominence...

This image, captured by the SoloHI instrument onboard the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter, shows the comet Leonard. Image credit: ESA / NASA / NRL / SoloHI.

NASA’s and ESA’s Sun-Studying Missions Observe Comet Leonard

Dec 22, 2021 by News Staff

When C/2021 A1 (Leonard), a recently-discovered long-period comet about 1 km wide, makes its closest pass of the Sun on January 3, 2022, it will be a journey...

Hubble resolved roughly 25 fragments of comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) on April 23, 2020. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / D. Jewitt, University of California, Los Angeles / Q. Ye, University of Maryland.

ESA’s Solar Orbiter Encounters Tail of Fragmented Comet ATLAS

Jul 20, 2021 by News Staff

The long-period comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) fragmented during its perihelion in April 2020. About two months later, ESA’s Solar Orbiter observed the dusty...

Sketch of the relative positions of NASA’s and ESA’s spacecraft that observed the February 12, 2021 coronal mass ejections; ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft was ‘behind’ the Sun from the perspective of Earth; the Earth was about 12 degrees west of Sun-center as seen from Solar Orbiter; ESA’s Proba-2, which orbits the Earth, and the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), which is located in orbit around the Lagrange point 1, 1.5 million km in front of the Earth towards the Sun, also viewed the coronal mass ejection; NASA’s STEREO-A (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) also caught a glimpse of the event from its viewpoint away from the direct Sun-Earth line; together the spacecraft provide valuable, different perspectives on the same event. Image credit: ESA.

Solar Orbiter Observes Two Huge Eruptions on Sun

May 18, 2021 by News Staff

The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), the Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) and the Metis coronagraph onboard the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter captured different...

This image was captured on November 18, 2020, by the SoloHI camera on board Solar Orbiter. Venus (left), Earth (middle), and Mars (right) are visible in the foreground. Stars are visible in the background, appearing to move in Solar Orbiter’s recording while the spacecraft travels around the Sun. The Sun is located on the right, outside the video frame. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Solar Orbiter / SoloHI Team / U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

Solar Orbiter Spots Venus, Earth and Mars

Jan 28, 2021 by News Staff

Solar Orbiter, a collaborative mission between ESA and NASA to study the Sun, has captured a series of images showing three solar system planets: Venus,...

ESA’s Solar Orbiter reached its first perihelion, the point in its orbit closest to the star, on June 15, 2020, getting as close as 77 million km (47.8 million miles) to the star’s surface. Imager credit: ESA / ATG Medialab.

ESA Releases Solar Orbiter’s First Science Data

Oct 1, 2020 by News Staff

ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft, in collaboration with NASA, launched in February 2020 on its mission to study to Sun and it began collecting science...

A high-resolution image from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on Solar Orbiter, taken with the HRIEUV telescope on May 30, 2020. The circle in the lower left corner indicates the size of Earth for scale. The arrow points to one of the ubiquitous features of the solar surface, called ‘campfires’ and revealed for the first time by these images. On May 30, Solar Orbiter was roughly halfway between the Earth and the Sun, meaning that it was closer to the Sun than any other solar telescope has ever been before. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Solar Orbiter / EUI Team / CSL / IAS / MPS / PMOD / WRC / ROB / UCL / MSSL.

Solar Orbiter Beams Back Its First Images of the Sun

Jul 17, 2020 by News Staff

Solar Orbiter, a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, made its first close approach to the Sun in mid-June and captured unique...

The ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission will face the Sun from within the orbit of Mercury at its closest approach. Image credit: ESA / ATG Medialab.

Solar Orbiter Sends Back First Science Data

Feb 20, 2020 by News Staff

Solar Orbiter, a new collaborative mission between ESA and NASA to study our Sun, successfully launched on an Atlas V 411 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air...

Solar Orbiter: ESA, NASA Successfully Launch New Mission to Study Sun

Feb 10, 2020 by News Staff

Solar Orbiter, a new collaborative mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA to study our Sun, launched at 05:03 CET on February 10, 2020...