The first close approach by a craft looping around the Sun was filmed in glorious detail.
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter entered the close encounter, known as perihelion, on 26 March, coming in at a distance of around 48 million kilometers (30 million miles).
At that location, the temperature was around 500 degrees Celsius. Future perihelions are expected to get even hotter.
We have never seen the Sun as it was as it swooped around its elliptical path.
The data from these new observations should provide a wealth of data for teasing out the behavior of the Sun, including its wild magnetic fields, and the sometimes chaotic weather it blasts out into interplanetary space.
As it made its close approach, we saw a spectacular high-resolution image from the spacecraft. The video of the encounter has been released by the European Space Agency.
Solar Orbiter will make a huge difference to solar science because it can show us parts of the Sun we can't usually see. Because of Earth's position in the sun's equator, it's difficult to see the poles, which are only seen from above and below the sun.
The solar magnetic fields that play a huge role in solar activity are thought to be very important in the polar regions. The poles are hard to see, so we don't know what happens to the magnetic fields there. Solar Orbiter has a suite of instruments.
On March 30 it saw a region with magnetic field lines that were moving away from the Sun.
Another interest is the solaredgehog. Solar physicists are still trying to figure out what it is, and how it formed, after it was captured on 30 March. It consists of a relatively small region about 25,000 kilometers across.
There are hot and less hot spikes of solar gas in the solar corona and atmosphere.
David Berghmans of the Royal Observatory of Belgium says the images are amazing.
Even if Solar Obiter stopped taking data tomorrow, I would be busy for years trying to figure it out.
The main objective of the Solar Orbiter is to help scientists understand the effect the Sun has on the entire heliosphere, or the sphere of solar influence defined by the solar wind. The solar wind blows particles and magnetic fields out into space, tangling with the planets.
The closer the Solar Orbiter is to the Sun, the better it will be to see how the solar wind blows. It detected an outflow of particles as it drew near perihelion on 21 March. The less energetic particles arrived first. The particles were close to the surface of the Sun.
Other instruments picked up solar events that could have produced the particles, speeding them out into space, including a solar flare and coronal mass ejection.
The Sun is currently very active and the spacecraft is going to be able to provide a lot of valuable data on solar activity. It will swoop as close as 40 million kilometers from the Sun using Venus flybys in order to boost its speed.
The first perihelion is rich with new data and is a good example of the solar bonanza to come.
The quality of the data from the first perihelion was so good that Daniel MxFC;ller, the Project Scientist for Solar Orbiter, said.
It is hard to believe that this is the beginning of the mission. We are going to be very busy.
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