Sun Salutation

European and NASA spacecraft have captured the closest photo of the sun ever taken, sparking countless small bonfires everywhere. ^{Sources: 7}

On Thursday, scientists released the first image of the Solar Orbiter, which was launched from Cape Canaveral in Feb 2020. The solar image was taken by NASA’s Solar and Planetary Science Institute (SPIE) and the European Space Agency (ESA). The images, taken with the space telescope Imaging Spectrometer (STIS) aboard the spacecraft, were studied by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and the National Science Foundation (NASA). ^{Sources: 6, 7}

The images show that parts of the solar atmosphere, considered dark and largely empty, are filled with electrified gases. ^{Sources: 6}

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has flown past the sun for the first time with a camera that can safely photograph it.

The mission, estimated at just 0.28 AU, captured some of the most detailed images of our sun ever seen, including the first images of its poles. That is why the new images from the Solar Orbiter, showing the surface of the Sun, its atmosphere and its magnetic field, are so valuable. ^{Sources: 7, 8}

The most detailed images of the sun’s surface ever taken are the result of a three-year mission by NASA’s Solar and Planetary Orbiter (SPO) mission, which cost $1.2 billion (now $2.5 billion). Scientists today released the first images from the first three months of the mission from Maui, Hawaii. ^{Sources: 8}

As in the first picture of DKIST we see details We have never seen it before, and in this image taken at 789 nm you can see it in detail. Just as we saw in our first images of the sun from the first three months of the SPO mission, in these first images of the DKist. ^{Sources: 4, 8}

This image shows the turbulent boiling gas that covers the entire Sun, with the Sun’s surface at 789 nm in the center of the image and the Sun at a distance of about 1,000 km. ^{Sources: 1}

Researchers have captured the best – and most resolute – view of the sun ever, with a resolution of about 1,000 km at a distance of about 1.5 million km. This image is the first light to reveal unprecedented details of the surface of our sun. So if you are dazzled by looking at the nearest star with the naked eye, do yourself a favor and look at this image, the most detailed one ever. ^{Sources: 4, 5}

This is a typical image of the sun taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) at a distance of about 1.5 million kilometers. This resolution image, with a resolution of 1,000 km, is the first time we have really looked at the surface of our sun. ^{Sources: 5}

This type of image shows some detail, but is missing in many other parts of the solar system, such as the solar surface. This new ESO VLT image is the first image of our sun from a distance of 93 million miles. Only two such systems have been observed, and even rarer are those recorded at a distance of less than 1.5 million kilometers with a resolution of about 1,000 kilometers. ^{Sources: 2, 5}

Click on the image to see the entire frame, and you can see in the new image that the innermost star of the Sun – like the planet Enceladus – is in the top left of the frame. When the ESO VLT image at the top of this page captured the first image of an exoplanet around a failed star in our own solar system in 2004, it was also the first telescope to imaging exoplanets directly. ^{Sources: 2}

The Solar Orbiter mission cost about $1.5 billion, including NASA’s Atlas 5 rocket. The US space agency spent $70 million on the construction and flew in a highly elliptical orbit that carried it to a distance of about 1,500 miles (2,000 kilometers) from the sun. ^{Sources: 3}

It will take about two years for the Solar Orbiter to reach the right orbit to observe the sun’s polar regions. The mission of the probe is to get a vantage point on the sun that we have not been able to see with a probe before. The discovery at the campfire is part of a joint mission by ESA and NASA that launched from Florida on February 9. ^{Sources: 0}

In the meantime, the vehicle is testing its ten scientific instruments, including its camera, as well as its payload on solar panels and solar wind instruments. ^{Sources: 0}

Meanwhile, the Solar Orbiter will be able to use its high-resolution camera to photograph the sun for the first time, something that the Parker Solar Probe lacks. This camera poking around in the corona, a region of the solar system’s outermost layer of plasma and solar wind, will provide the most accurate image of our sun ever taken. The Parker probe shows us plasma from the corona that we have never seen before on previous missions, “says Dr. Michael O’Neill, associate professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego and member of Parker’s Applied Physics Laboratory. 

Cited Sources

• https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/16/21326014/esa-nasa-solar-orbiter-images-flares-campfires-sun-close-distance ⁰
• https://abcnews.go.com/US/solar-telescope-produces-images-suns-surface-unprecedented-detail/story?id=68639488 ¹
• https://dailygalaxy.com/2020/07/epic-eso-captures-first-ever-image-of-a-sun-like-multi-planet-system/ ²
• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sun-images-closest-ever-taken/ ³
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2020/01/29/here-is-the-most-detailed-photo-of-the-sun-ever-and-it-could-one-day-save-your-life/ ⁴
• https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/305564-scientists-snap-closest-ever-view-of-the-sun ⁵
• https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8203175/British-researchers-reveal-highest-resolution-images-Sun.html ⁶
• https://www.today.com/news/nasa-snaps-closest-pictures-ever-sun-s-surface-t187070 ⁷
• https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/home-star-stunner-best-ever-images-of-solar-surface-herald-new-era1/ ⁸