Epic animation shows Solar Orbiter approaching the Sun

The European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter mission approached the Sun on October 12, 2022

year at 22:12 Moscow time.At the time of writing this news, no photographs of this meeting have been published. However, ESA showed a sequence of images that showed the spacecraft heading towards the star. The first picture is dated September 20, and the last one is October 10.

Photos combined into animation were received fromusing the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) using the Full Sun Imager (FSI) telescope on board Solar Orbiter. In the photographs, the Sun is visible at a wavelength of 17 nanometers. It is emitted by gas in the star's atmosphere with a temperature of about a million degrees. The color in the image was added artificially because the original wavelength detected by the instrument is invisible to the human eye.

Much of modern society relies onspacecraft in orbit around the Earth to provide essential communications and navigation. A better understanding of the Sun and the “weather” it creates will help companies fly satellites around the planet safely and reliably.

Towards the end of the sequence there is an imagebounces slightly. This occurs in the days when the EUI did not send data to Earth. The color bar at the top of the image shows the impressive amount of data collected during this period, as well as those short gaps in coverage.

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