Video: Solar Orbiter’s unprecedented view of the quiet corona

The ESA-led Photo voltaic Orbiter mission has skilled its second shut encounter with the sun. It’s delivering extra gorgeous information, and at increased decision than ever earlier than.

The second of closest method happened on October 12 at 19:12 UTC (21:12 CEST), when Photo voltaic Orbiter was simply 29% of the Earth’s distance from the sun. This film comes from 13 October, when the spacecraft’s Excessive Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) returned the best decision film of the quiet corona ever taken with any instrument.

Every pixel of this film spans 105 km on the floor of the sun. Which means if EUI had been to take a look at the Earth from this distance, our whole planet would span simply 120 pixels throughout. The film itself accommodates 2,048 throughout, that means that 17 Earths would match facet by facet throughout this picture.

The corona is the sun’s outer ambiance. It’s termed quiet when there’s little considerable solar exercise reminiscent of flares or coronal mass ejections. This film, and others taken through the encounter, present the dynamic nature of the sun’s million degree-hot corona. The electrically charged fuel right here, referred to as plasma, is in fixed movement, guided and accelerated by adjustments of the sun’s magnetic field. The arches of vivid plasma within the film are being held in place by loops of magnetism that burst up into the corona from the sun’s inside.

The sun is at present ramping up for a peak in its exercise ranges, referred to as solar most, in 2025. So views of a quiet corona are more likely to turn out to be rarer within the coming few years.

The sun launches a solar wind of particles that streams out by way of the solar system. It originates within the corona however the exact mechanism by which this occurs is poorly understood. Investigating this phenomenon is a key focus for solar physicists, and one in all Photo voltaic Orbiter’s major scientific targets.

This explicit encounter benefited from Photo voltaic Orbiter quickly flying within the course of Earth. This allowed way more information to be downlinked. It additionally allowed for coordinated observations of solar options to be made with Earth-based telescopes, from 21 October onwards.

“I’m very a lot wanting ahead to information from all ten devices being downloaded through the subsequent few weeks, after which the world-wide science neighborhood shall be very busy discovering new issues utilizing this distinctive information set,” says Daniel Müller, ESA venture scientist for Photo voltaic Orbiter.

This film was enhanced with Wavelet Optimized Whitening method.