![]() By the end of the mission, this will have risen to 33 degrees. To shed light on this region, Solar Orbiter has already left the plane within which the Earth orbits the Sun by four degrees. From Earth, the poles of the Sun can hardly be seen. In addition, images of the solar south pole region were obtained. Hardi Peter of MPS, a member of the EUI team. It is unclear what exactly is going on there and how this structure is formed," says Prof. "We have never seen a phenomenon like this before. It measures about 25,000 kilometers in diameter. In images from March 30, for example, there is a curious structure from which hot plasma flows in all directions in a ray-like fashion. "Solar Orbiter's images of the corona exceed all previous ones in detail and will help to better understand the structures and processes in this part of the Sun," says Prof. This is the region where most of the solar activity originates.ĮUI's images obtained around the time of the flyby show the corona in the highest-resolution ever. This provides a unique opportunity to observe the processes in the corona from the surface up to a distance up to three solar radii in high resolution and without loss of continuity. ![]() At such close distances from the Sun as during the flyby, the instrument provides meaningful data not only from the low corona on the disk, but up to a distance that overlaps with Metis' field of view. The same applies to the EUI (Extreme Ultraviolet Imager) instrument, which images the corona in extremely short-wave ultraviolet light using three reflecting telescopes. ![]() © ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI & PHI Teams The MPS has contributed essential components to both instruments. The instrument SPICE (Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment) splits the light from the corona into its wavelengths and can thus determine, for example, which elements are present in which region of the corona. The coronagraph Metis blocks out the solar disk, making the outer region of the corona visible. Three of Solar Orbiter’s instruments image these and other processes in the corona. Violent bursts of particles and radiation occur there again and again. Some of the most exciting images show the Sun's corona, where hot plasma flows trapped by strong magnetic fields. Therefore, only a part of the recorded data has reached Earth so far and could be reviewed by the scientific teams in the past weeks. ![]() However, because of the current large distance between the spacecraft and Earth, the data transmission rate is rather low. In the days surrounding the recent flyby, all instruments were operating. ![]()
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