The Solar Orbiter probe has captured the latest images of the Sun. There is a unique appearance that has never been seen before, namely a powerful-looking flare and a patch of strange patterns that stretch across the Sun.
The British spacecraft's closest orbit to the Sun, known as perihelion, occurred on March 26, 2022. At that time, the Solar Orbiter entered the orbit of Mercury, which is about a third of the distance from the Sun to Earth.
Quoted from the Daily Mail, Monday (23/5/2022) Solar Orbiter captured a series of stunning images, including views at the solar poles and several solar flares. This finding is all the more important because it can reveal more about the threat space weather poses to technology and astronauts.
Another interesting thing that the Solar Orbiter spacecraft caught was the spike-like pattern of hot and cold gas reaching out in all directions and stretching across the Sun.
It's great to see these incredible images and footage, the closest we've ever seen of the Sun, captured during the Solar Orbiter's closest trajectory so far," said Caroline Harper, Head of Space Science at the UK Space Agency.
"We've already seen some interesting data returned from science instruments on this British-built spacecraft, bringing us closer to understanding how natural events on the Sun's surface contribute to space weather."
According to him, the researchers learned not only from the images sent by the Solar Orbiter, but also from what it 'feels' as it gets closer to the Sun, including recent solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
The Solar Orbiter, in its exploration, carried 10 science instruments. A total of nine of them, an initiative of member states of the European Space Agency and one by NASA. All of them work together to provide unprecedented insight into how the Sun works.
The orbiter's main goal is to explore the relationship between the Sun and the heliosphere, the massive bubble of space that extends beyond the planets of our Solar System.
This region is filled with electrically charged particles, most of which have been ejected by the Sun to form the solar wind. The motions of these particles, and the Sun's magnetic field, are linked to what creates space weather.
