'The Closer We Look, the More We See': First Ever Highest-Definition Images of the Sun Captured by NASA's Solar Orbiter

The Solar Orbiter Mission stunned the world with its highest-resolution views of the sun to date. The images focus on interesting phenomena like sunspots and the motion of charged gas called plasma on the surface, CNN reported. The photos were taken on March 22, 2023, and have recently been released to the public by the European Space Agency (ESA).

Solar Orbiter is a joint venture between ESA and NASA, Smithsonian Magazine reported. It was launched in 2020, to get the closest-ever images of the sun and the first close-up images of its polar regions. The first batch of images arrived in July of the same year, and since then the project has reached multiple milestones. 

The four images released by ESA concentrate on the star's visible surface called the photosphere. Each image is a collection of 25 high-resolution shots. The Solar Orbiter Mission took 100 clicks at a distance of 46 million miles from the sun, which has been distributed across the four images. Throughout the entire process, the spacecraft had to change its position multiple times, to get each shot.

Researchers worldwide were ecstatic to see the sun from such close quarters, CNN reported. "The closer we look, the more we see," Mark Miesch, an astrophysicist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, who wasn’t involved with obtaining the images said. "To understand the elaborate interplay between large and small; between twisted magnetic fields and churning flows, we need to behold the sun in all its splendor. These high-resolution images from Solar Orbiter bring us closer to that aspiration than ever before."

The images captured on March 22, 2023, were done using only two imaging instruments (Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) and Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI)), Smithsonian Magazine reported.

"These new high-resolution maps from Solar Orbiter’s PHI instrument show the beauty of the sun’s surface magnetic field and flows in great detail. At the same time, they are crucial for inferring the magnetic field in the sun’s hot corona, which our EUI instrument is imaging," Daniel Müller, a Solar Orbiter project scientist with the ESA explained. "The sun’s magnetic field is key to understanding the dynamic nature of our home star from the smallest to the largest scales."

One of the images showcases the sun's constantly moving surface. The surface contains hot plasma, which is essentially charged gas. According to experts, this layer has a temperature between 8,132 and 10,832 degrees Fahrenheit and is responsible for most of the star's radiation. In the pictures, the sun's surface appears to be grainy. Researchers believe this is because of dense plasma swirling in the star's convection zone.

Another phenomenon brought out by the images was sunspots, Smithsonian Magazine reported. The captures revealed that the star's magnetic field was stronger in the place with the sunspots. As per researchers, the red on the photos indicates the outward movement of the magnetic field, while the blue showcases the inward motion.

In one of the captures, researchers have created a velocity map of the star. On the map, the blue showcases movement toward the Solar Orbiter, and the red indicates movement away from it. "This map shows that while the plasma on the surface of the sun generally rotates with the sun’s overall spin around its axis, it is pushed outward around the sunspots," according to the statement released by ESA.

The last image has the sun’s corona as the central subject. This area is visible to humans only during a total solar eclipse. Here also activity is noted around the sunspots. These images are a huge breakthrough for the scientists. They hope these captures are just the beginning and eventually the team will be able to release similar images with greater speed.