The Solar Orbiter spacecraft captured a series of close-up and stunning images of the Sun, bringing to light for the first time new details of our star, including the so-called “solar hedgehog”, a strange jet of hot and cold gas first seen in solar surface. The “hedgehog”, as christened by scientists, has an area of ​​25,000 kilometers, about twice the diameter of the Earth, yet covering only a small part of the diameter of the Sun (1.4 million km).
According to the European Space Agency (ESA), which is leading the Solar Orbiter mission in collaboration with the US Space Agency (NASA), the spacecraft also had the opportunity to observe the South Pole of the Sun. It is the first time that any ground or space telescope has taken such detailed images of this region of our parent star, which is believed to play a key role in creating the solar magnetic field.
“Immediately breathtaking images,” said David Bergmans, a solar physicist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, chief scientist and head of the spacecraft’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager, which captures high-resolution images of low-resolution images. of the Sun, of the solar crown.
The Solar Orbiter, which was launched in February 2020 and carries ten scientific instruments (nine European and one American), made its first approach to the Sun on March 26, reaching the so-called perihelion. It will make its next close passage on October 13, at an even shorter distance from the star, so it is expected to take even more detailed images. But only after 2026 will the spacecraft be able to “see” the polar regions of the Sun more directly than ever before.
The main scientific goal of the mission is to study the connection between the Sun and the sunspot, the large “bubble” in space, which extends beyond the planets of our solar system and is full of electrically charged particles, mainly the solar “wind” ». It is the motion of these particles and the associated solar magnetic fields that create space “weather”. The ultimate goal is the best prediction by scientists of this time, which may have implications for the Earth.
Follow Skai.gr on Google News
and be the first to know all the news
I have over 8 years of experience in the news industry. I have worked for various news websites and have also written for a few news agencies. I mostly cover healthcare news, but I am also interested in other topics such as politics, business, and entertainment. In my free time, I enjoy writing fiction and spending time with my family and friends.
