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Solar Orbiter Captures Closest Images of Sun

Natalie Seo

   The European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA have released the [1]first
   images from the Solar Orbiter spacecraft -- the closest pictures ever
   taken of the sun.

   "These amazing images will help scientists piece together the sun's
   atmospheric layers, which is important for understanding how it drives
   space weather near the Earth and throughout the solar system," said
   Holly Gilbert, NASA project scientist.

   The two space agencies, working in collaboration, launched the Solar
   Orbiter in February from Cape Canaveral, and it completed its first
   close pass of the sun in mid-June. The spacecraft took the pictures
   approximately 48 million miles from the sun -- about half the distance
   between Earth and the sun.

   The high-resolution images released Thursday revealed tiny solar
   flares, what principal investigator David Berghmans called "campfires."

   "These campfires we are talking about here are the little nephews of
   solar flares, at least a million, perhaps a billion times smaller,"
   said Berghmans, an astrophysicist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium
   in Brussels.

   "They are literally everywhere we look," Berghmans said.

References

   1. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/solar-orbiter-returns-first-data-snaps-closest-pictures-of-the-sun

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