Miniature flares, dubbed ‘campfires’, were captured 77 million kilometres from the Sun’s surface by the Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager. (ESA)
Closest photo of the Sun ever taken
The closest image ever taken of the Sun shows the corona teeming with thousands of miniature solar flares. The flares are millions or billions of times smaller than those that can be seen from Earth, and scientists aren’t yet sure how the two phenomena are related. The pictures are the first released from the Solar Orbiter satellite mission, led by the European Space Agency. “When the first images came in, my first thought was this is not possible, it can’t be that good,” says David Berghmans, principal investigator for the orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager instrument. “It was much better than we dared to hope for.”
Nature | 5 min read
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