Today, we invite you to make yourself comfortable on your sofa and head out into space. Space where a space probe managed to capture spectacular videos of the Sun.
As the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter spacecraft looped around the Sun, it came particularly close to this star on March 26. It actually reached a distance of regarding 48 million kilometers, inside the orbit of Mercure. At this distance, temperatures reached around 500 degrees.
So close to the Sun, the space probe was able to see the Sun as we had never seen it before and offer us unprecedented images. As you can see in the video above, the specialists were able to get detailed views of the usually hidden solar poles.
These spectacular images are a goldmine for scientists. They can help them unravel the Sun’s still misunderstood or unknown behavior, including its magnetic fields and the sometimes chaotic weather it casts into interplanetary space. “The images are truly breathtaking”said David Berghmansphysicist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium. “Even if Solar Orbiter stopped taking data tomorrow, I would be busy for years trying to figure this all out. »
Finally, the Sun is currently active enough for Solar Orbiter to still send us many valuable data on solar activity for years to come, as the physicist specified. “We are delighted with the quality of the data from our first perihelion”or point in the trajectory of a celestial object in heliocentric orbit that is closest to the Sun, added the physicist and ESA project scientist for Solar Orbiter, Daniel Mueller. “It’s almost hard to believe that this is just the beginning of the mission. We’re going to be really busy. »
Below, you can admire more shots captured by Solar Orbiter. What do you think ?