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This otherworldly, ever-changing\u00a0landscape is what the Sun looks like up close.\u00a0ESA’s\u00a0Solar Orbiter\u00a0filmed\u00a0the transition from the\u00a0Sun’s lower atmosphere to the much hotter outer corona.\u00a0The hair-like structures are made of charged gas\u00a0(plasma),\u00a0following magnetic field lines emerging from the Sun’s interior.<\/p>\n
The brightest\u00a0regions are around one million degrees Celsius, while cooler material looks dark as it absorbs radiation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This video was\u00a0recorded on 27 September 2023\u00a0by the\u00a0Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument on\u00a0Solar Orbiter.\u00a0At the time, the spacecraft\u00a0was at roughly a third of the Earth\u2019s distance from the Sun, heading for a closest\u00a0approach\u00a0of 43 million km\u00a0on 7 October.<\/p>\n
On the same day that this video was recorded,\u00a0NASA\u2019s\u00a0Parker Solar Probe\u00a0skimmed\u00a0just\u00a07.26 million\u00a0km\u00a0from the solar surface. Rather than directly imaging the Sun, Parker measures particles and\u00a0the\u00a0magnetic\u00a0field in the Sun\u2019s corona and in\u00a0the\u00a0solar wind.\u00a0This was\u00a0a\u00a0perfect opportunity for the\u00a0two missions to team up, with\u00a0ESA-led\u00a0Solar Orbiter\u2019s\u00a0remote-sensing instruments observing the source region of the solar wind that would subsequently\u00a0flow\u00a0past Parker Solar Probe.<\/p>\n
Spot the\u00a0moss,\u00a0spicules,\u00a0eruption\u00a0and\u00a0rain<\/b><\/p>\n
Lower left corner: An intriguing feature\u00a0visible throughout\u00a0this movie is the bright gas that makes delicate, lace-like patterns across the Sun. This is called coronal \u2018moss\u2019. It usually appears around the\u00a0base\u00a0of large coronal loops that are too hot or too tenuous to be seen\u00a0with the chosen instrument settings.<\/p>\n
On the solar horizon: Spires of gas, known as spicules, reach up from the Sun\u2019s chromosphere. These can reach up to a height of 10\u00a0000\u00a0km.<\/p>\n
Centre around 0:22:\u00a0A\u00a0small eruption in the centre of the field of view, with cooler material being lifted upwards\u00a0before mostly falling back down.\u00a0Don\u2019t be fooled\u00a0by the use of\u00a0\u2018small\u2019 here: this eruption is bigger than Earth!<\/p>\n
Centre-left around 0:30: \u2018Cool\u2019 coronal rain (probably\u00a0less than 10 000\u00a0\u00b0C)\u00a0looks dark\u00a0against the bright background of large coronal loops (around\u00a0one million degrees).\u00a0The rain is made of\u00a0higher-density\u00a0clumps of plasma that fall back towards the Sun under the influence of gravity.<\/p>\n
Click here for\u00a0a version of this video without annotations.<\/i><\/p>\n
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