The most recent total solar eclipse on April 8 offered a rare glimpse into the Sun’s raging corona. including some noticeable protrusions. Those views were nice, but a new video captured by Europe’s Sun Buzzing Probe offers some of the best close-up views of our parent star we’ve ever seen.
This incredible video, captured on September 27, 2023 by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument on board the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter, shows the Sun at impressive close range, says ESA explained in a press release.
At the time of recording, the spacecraft was about a third of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or 0.33 AU. In comparison, Mercury is on average about 0.39 AU from the Sun. That’s a close encounter with the Sun, but Solar Orbiter is on track for an even closer approach and is expected to reach a minimum distance of 43 million kilometers (0.287 AU) from the Sun on October 7.
The video captures a complex and dynamic stellar environment, clearly showing the transition from the Sun’s lower atmosphere to its much hotter outer corona. Thin, hair-like structures made of plasma or charged gas reveal the presence of magnetic field lines erupting from within the Sun. According to ESA, the brightest areas seen in the video reach temperatures of around one million degrees Celsius, with the dark areas being areas where radiation is absorbed.
ESA also provided one commented version of the video to explain the different features, but here’s a breakdown. In the lower left corner are the delicate, lacy patterns created by bright gas known as coronal “moss”; These patterns are typically found at the base of large coronal loops that are invisible under current device settings. Towering gas spikes called spicules extend along the solar horizon to a distance of about 10,000 kilometers from the Sun’s chromosphere. In the middle, at the 22-second mark of the video, a small eruption occurs – one that is actually larger than Earth and shows cooler material being lifted up and then mostly falling back down. Coronal rain can also be seen among the erupting plasma streams.
On the same day this video was captured, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe flew within 4.5 million miles (7.26 million kilometers) of the Sun’s surface and measured particles and the magnetic field in the solar corona and wind, according to ESA . This opened up a unique opportunity for collaboration as Solar Orbiter’s ESA-led remote sensing instruments observed the origin region of the solar wind that Parker would later encounter.
So yes, the Sun is very hot right now, both literally and for stellar scientists with their intrepid solar spacecraft.
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