Zooming into the sun with Solar Orbiter

The full sun is shown in unprecedented detail. They were taken on 7 March, when the spacecraft was crossing between the Earth and sun.

One of the images taken by the EUI is the highest resolution image of the sun's full disk and outer atmosphere.

The first full sun image of its kind in 50 years was taken by theSPICE instrument and it was the best one.

The images were taken when Solar Orbiter was half way between our world and its parent star. A mosaic of 25 individual images is needed to cover the entire sun, because the high-resolution telescope of EUI takes pictures of such high spatial resolution. The full image was taken over a period of more than four hours because each tile takes about 10 minutes to point from one segment to the next.

The final image contains more than 83 million images in a grid. This image is ten times better than a 4K TV screen.

The sun is seen by EUI at a wavelength of 17 nanometers. The corona has a temperature of around a million degrees Celsius.

At the 2 o'clock and 8 o'clock positions on the edges of the sun, dark filaments can be seen projecting away from the surface. These eruptions are prone to erupt, throwing huge quantities of gas into space and creating storms.

The SPICE instrument was recording data during the crossing. They had to be pieced together as a mosaic.

This is a high resolution image of the Sun. Data processing: E. Kraaikamp.

The sun's atmosphere is traced through a layer known as the chromoosphere, which is closer to the surface. The instrument looks at the different wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light that comes from different atoms.

In the sequence of images purple is the temperature of hydrogen gas, blue is carbon, green is oxygen and yellow is neon.

Solar physicists will be able to trace the powerful eruptions that take place in the corona down through the lower atmospheric layers. One of the most puzzling observations about the sun is how the temperature is rising through the atmospheric layers.

As you move away from a hot object the temperature drops. The corona is a million degrees Celsius higher than the surface of the sun.

The images were taken on March 7th when Solar Orbiter crossed the sun-Earth line, so they can be compared with Earth-bound solar instruments. It will be easier to compare results from different instruments in the future.

The first close perihelion is on 26 March. The highest resolution images of the sun it can take are being taken from Mercury, the inner planet. The data is being recorded on the solar wind of particles.

Over the next few years, the spacecraft will fly close to the sun. It will gradually raise its orientation to view the sun's previously unobserved polar regions.

The Solar Orbiter is a space mission.

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