First Images of The Sun's Surface: What have we discovered?
The Sun is the hottest and largest object in the solar system, it’s what we all revolve
around every single day and it’s one of the few objects in space we can see every
single day from the earth.
Yet, there are shockingly few pictures of the Sun’s surface.
Here are some of the first pictures of the Sun’s surface, as well as a few other interesting
facts about the sun:
In February of 2020, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), in a joint program, launched
the Solar Orbiter.
With a mission cost of $1.5 billion, this would be the closest that any made object
has ever gotten to the sun in history.
The Solar Orbiter is sometimes considered the most heat-resistant object NASA has ever
made, and that’s important when you’re literally going towards the sun.
Currently, the Solar Orbiter is in its cruise stage, and not in its orbit stage, which means
so far, we haven’t gotten the closest to the sun, but we’re still pretty close.
The Solar Orbiter project had a few primary goals.
The first was to study and figure out where the sun’s magnetic field and solar wind
plasma originate in the Sun’s corona.
They also want to observe solar transients, solar eruptions, solar dynamo and they hope
to capture images that show us all of these phenomena in detail.
In July of 2020, the Solar Orbiter sent back
the first images from its project, and these images are the closest pictures ever captured
of the sun, and they also give us more of an insight into what the sun’s surface might
look like up close.
Holly Gilbert, one of NASA’s project scientists for this mission said that these images will
be extremely important in helping us figure out the sun’s atmospheric layers which,
in turn, should also help us figure out how the sun’s atmosphere influences the earth’s
atmosphere and climate.
Not even NASA and the ESA expected the Solar Orbiter to start sending images over to NASA
so quickly.
It had only been 4 and a half months since it was launched into orbit, and it was already
close enough to send incredibly detailed images of the sun.
It was also incredibly challenging for the scientists working at the two space agencies
to cooperate during the pandemic which had ravaged much of the world including the offices
of these two space agencies.
Due to the pandemic, they had to perform all critical operations remotely, something they
had never done before.
The reason why this spacecraft was able to capture an image of the sun so soon into the
mission, despite it not being expected to begin its orbit until November of 2021, is
that it had an unexpected encounter with ATLAS on June 1 and 6 which required it to go off-course
slightly.
Doing so put it within 48 million miles of the Sun, making it close enough for all of
its 10 instruments, including its 6 imaging instruments, to automatically activate and
since the spacecraft happened to face the sun, it captures the closest image of the
sun in history.
There have been spacecraft that have actually gotten much closer to the sun in the past,
but none of them were facing the sun so they simply weren’t able to capture images of
it.
When talking about the unprecedented images captured by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft,
David Berghmans, the principal investigator at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels
said “The campfires we are talking about here are the little nephews of solar flares,
at least a million, perhaps a billion times smaller, when looking at the new high-resolution
EUI images, they are literally everywhere we look.”
We still don’t know exactly what these little “campfires”, as he calls them, are, but
they’re believed to be mini-explosions that are known as nanoflares, which are believed
to play a factor in warming up the sun’s outer atmosphere and are around 300 times
hotter than the sun’s surface.
The light patterns that were shown in the images also gave scientists who were studying
them at the observatories more confidence that when Solar Orbiter gets closer to the
sun, it would effectively be able to capture the solar winds around the sun for the first
time in history.
German scientist Sami Solanki said, “The magnetic structures we see at the visible
surface show that PHI is receiving top-quality data; we're prepared for great science as
more of the Sun’s poles come into view.”
For the next few months, the Solar Orbiter was generally quiet, until in February of
2021, about a year after its initial launch, the Solar Orbiter captured something incredible,
the first-ever Solar Eruption ever captured by a spacecraft.
Capturing and studying these solar eruptions was one of the main goals of the Solar Orbiter,
and it’s incredible that one was captured before its mission is even set to begin in
November of 2021 and it shows how the Solar Orbiter has already been one of NASA’s most
successful projects in the 21st century.
However, since the sensors of the spacecraft would fully become operational until November
of this year, the images that were captured by this spacecraft of the solar eruptions
is rather grainy and difficult to comprehend, but they’re still some of the most unique
images captured in history, at least when it comes to space.
If you pay close attention to this clip that was released by NASA in March, you’ll be
able to see the quick blast of solar particles, known as Coronal mass ejection or CME, escaping
the sun which is on the upper right side of the screen out of the camera’s view.
There is significant distortion in the images as they had to be heavily compressed in order
for us to see it here on earth on time, but it’s still incredible what this spacecraft
was able to capture when only 15% of its sensors were working while it wasn’t even facing
the sun directly.
Once again, the team of scientists working at NASA and the ESA weren’t expecting to
capture this moment, and it’s being described as a “happy accident” on the NASA website.
The Solar Orbiter had just made its way from behind the sun (when seen from the earth’s
perspective) and the team wasn’t expecting any data to be sent back during this time,
but due to the significant upgrades made at the ground level on earth, they were able
to stay linked to the Solar Orbiter for a much longer time than they had previously
expected, so the limited sensors of the Solar Orbiter were able to detect the solar explosion
and immediately send the results to the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.,
capturing a CME for the first time in human history!
This is an incredible feat, as NASA has been trying to observe solar explosions for the
good part of almost three decades now, but this small spacecraft managed to capture it
before its official mission even began.
The Solar Orbiter is looking to be the spacecraft that might just change the way we see and
understand the sun for good.
So what’s next for the Solar Orbiter?
Well, despite having captured a solar explosion, it’s still a grainy clip that it sent over
and isn’t even close to what it’s actually capable of.
The clip was a nice little surprise for the researchers working on this project, but the
real fun is when the mission officially begins.
If everything goes to plan, the mission should begin in November of 2021, as we’ve already
mentioned.
By then, the Solar Orbiter will go into full “science mode”.
It will capture the most incredible images of the sun and its atmosphere, along with
various phenomena related to the sun, and we’ll be able to remotely observe them right
here on Earth.
We will be getting highly detailed looks into the sun’s surface, how it is evolving, and
how the sun might affect the planet and its climate.
It may even help us solve some of the problems related to climate change, but that's far
in the future of this mission.
For now, we should just expect to see the sun in a way that we’ve never seen before.
It’s no surprise that NASA and the ESA, along with the space and scientific community
in general, can barely hide their excitement when talking about this project, and for good
reason.
The sun, despite being so close to us, still has a lot of mysteries surrounding it, and
if we can get to the bottom of some of these mysteries, it would help us out here on earth
in more ways than you can imagine.
The total mission duration is set to last up to 10 years for the Solar Orbiter, and
we can’t wait to see the results.
And that’s a wrap for this video!
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