Solar Orbiter images unveil sunspots and magnetic fields in unprecedented detail

Written by Copernical Team Thursday, 21 November 2024 10:21

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Paris, France (SPX) Nov 21, 2024

The ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission has unveiled the most detailed full-disc images of the Sun's visible surface to date. These extraordinary visuals, captured on March 22, 2023, by the spacecraft's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) and Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), showcase the Sun's dynamic surface, magnetic field patterns, and glowing outer atmosphere. The PHI instrument prov

Solar Orbiter images unveil sunspots and magnetic fields in unprecedented detail
by Erica Marchand
Paris, France (SPX) Nov 21, 2024

The ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission has unveiled the most detailed full-disc images of the Sun's visible surface to date. These extraordinary visuals, captured on March 22, 2023, by the spacecraft's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) and Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), showcase the Sun's dynamic surface, magnetic field patterns, and glowing outer atmosphere.

The PHI instrument provided high-resolution maps of the Sun's surface, or photosphere, detailing the Sun's magnetic field and plasma movement. These images reveal the intricate behavior of the Sun's surface, where temperatures range between 4500 and 6000C. Meanwhile, the EUI instrument captured ultraviolet images of the Sun's corona, offering complementary insights into the plasma's behavior in the Sun's upper layers.

"The Sun's magnetic field is key to understanding the dynamic nature of our home star from the smallest to the largest scales. 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," said Daniel Muller, Solar Orbiter's Project Scientist.

Insights into Sunspots and Magnetic Activity
PHI's visible light image reveals sunspots - dark, cooler areas on the Sun's surface resulting from concentrated magnetic fields. These sunspots disrupt convection, the process that moves heat from the Sun's interior to its surface, causing the plasma in these regions to be cooler.

The magnetogram, another output from PHI, illustrates how the Sun's magnetic field intensifies in sunspot areas, with red denoting outward-pointing fields and blue showing inward fields. Additionally, PHI's velocity map, or tachogram, highlights how plasma movement at the surface correlates with the Sun's rotation and sunspot dynamics, showing outward movement around sunspots.

Above the photosphere, EUI's images of the corona reveal glowing plasma arches that follow magnetic field lines extending from active sunspot regions. This plasma, heated to millions of degrees, often connects neighboring sunspots, forming stunning patterns.

High-Resolution Mosaic Assembly
The Solar Orbiter achieved these images while orbiting 74 million kilometers from the Sun. Capturing full-disc views required the spacecraft to tilt and rotate to image each section of the Sun's surface. Each of the PHI and EUI mosaics consists of 25 images, assembled into a seamless representation of the Sun's surface and corona. The mosaics, spanning nearly 8000 pixels in diameter, highlight the extraordinary details of the Sun's features.

This achievement builds upon earlier releases, including images from March 7, 2022, and sets the stage for even faster processing and assembly of similar mosaics in the future. The PHI team plans to release high-resolution mosaics twice annually, contributing to ongoing studies of solar activity and magnetic phenomena.