The ASPIICS coronagraph aboard ESA’s formation-flying Proba-3 mission is able to observe the Sun’s corona in the gap between the fields of view of solar extreme-ultraviolet imagers and conventional coronagraphs, making it uniquely suited for studies of the inner solar corona.
This image is a combination of observations made on 23 May 2025 by three different European instruments aboard different missions: the Sun’s disc (artificially coloured in yellow), as captured by an extreme-ultraviolet telescope (SWAP) aboard Proba-2; the outer corona (in red) observed by the LASCO C2 coronagraph aboard SOHO; and the inner corona (in green), imaged in detail by Proba-3’s ASPIICS coronagraph, filling the gap.
See more images from Proba-3’s first artificial solar eclipse here.
[Image description: This is an image of the Sun composed of three different concentric images. In the centre there is a yellow disc – the Sun’s bright body. Around it, in the second concentric image, light green hair-like tendrils extend from the Sun’s edge in all directions. In the third, outermost part of the image, bright red rays extend further from the green tendrils towards the edges of the image.]