The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter has captured the first ever image of the Sun's south pole. (Photo credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team, D. Berghmans (ROB))
This time, you can safely take a look at the sun – provided that you are watching the recently released historic images of the sun's south pole by the European Space Agency (ESA).
Taken near the Sun on March 23 and released to humanity on Wednesday (June 11), new images from ESA's Solar Orbiter reveal a view of our star that has never been seen before by humans or spacecraft. While Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun's equator in an invisible plane known as the ecliptic, Solar Orbiter has spent the last few months tilting its orbit 17 degrees below the Sun's equator – revealing our star's mysterious south pole for the first time.
“Today we unveil the first ever views of the Sun’s pole,” ESA Director of Science Carol Mundell said in a statement. “These unique new views from our Solar Orbiter mission mark the beginning of a new era of solar science.”
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The new images cover the solar pole across a wide range of visible and ultraviolet wavelengths, using three of Solar Orbiter’s ten onboard instruments. The result is a colorful confetti of solar data, including an unprecedented look at the intricate weave of the sun’s magnetic field as it prepares to flip, and the high-speed movements of certain chemical elements as they travel in the plasma plumes that make up the solar wind, the constant stream of charged particles that drives space weather throughout our solar system.
According to ESA, these data will help us improve our understanding of the solar wind, space weather and the Sun's roughly 11-year activity cycle in the coming years.
But now, with the Sun at its peak activity (called solar maximum), producing a massive number of flares, special attention is being paid to magnetic measurements taken by the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instrument on board Solar Orbiter.
Sourse: www.livescience.com
