The ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft made the first of its close perihelion passages on 26 March 2022. The spacecraft flew closer to the Sun than the inner planet Mercury, achieving its closest approach at just 32 percent of the Earth’s distance from the Sun. Being that close to the Sun, the images and data returned were spectacular.
This image was taken by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager on 27 March 2022 and shows the Sun at a wavelength of 17 nanometers. This is the wavelength given off by gas at a temperature of around one million degrees, which corresponds to the temperature of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona. Magnetism reaches out from the Sun’s interior, trapping some of the coronal gasses and creating bright loops that are easy to see reaching into space on the limb of the Sun. Zoom into this image with this movie.
The colour on this image has been artificially added because the original wavelength detected by the instrument is invisible to the human eye.