Solar Orbiter's First Images | NASA

Solar Orbiter's First Images | NASA

Solar Orbiter's First Images

The Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) telescope on ESA/NASA’s Solar Orbiter takes images of the solar wind – the stream of charged particles constantly released by the Sun into outer space – by capturing the light scattered by electrons in the wind. 

This image is a mosaic of four separate images from four separate detectors, obtained during the instrument’s ‘first light’ on June 5, 2020. Then, Solar Orbiter was at a distance of about 48 million miles from the Sun, about half the Earth’s distance. 

SoloHI looks off to the left side of the Sun, 5 to 45 degrees from Sun center, which at a distance of 48 million miles away corresponds to about 10 to 85 times the solar radius, or from 3.8 to 46 million miles from the solar surface. 

The Sun is located to the right of the frame, and its light is blocked by a series of baffles that reject the sunlight by a factor of a trillion (1012). The last baffle is in the field of view on the right-hand side and is illuminated by reflections from the solar array. 

The partial ellipse visible on the right is the zodiacal light, created by sunlight reflecting off the dust particles that are orbiting the Sun. Planet Mercury is also visible as a small bright dot near the lower edge of the upper left tile. 

View all of Solar Orbiter's first images on NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio.

Credits: Solar Orbiter/SoloHI Team (ESA & NASA); U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

Last Updated: July 21, 2020

Editor: Miles Hatfield