This video sequence charts the progress of the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft’s dive towards its first close passage of the Sun. The sequence begins on 1 January 2022 and ends with a close up view of a solar flare that was observed on 2 March. During this time, Solar Orbiter moved from close to the orbit of Earth, about 150 million km from the Sun, to almost half that distance. On 7 March, Solar Orbiter crosses directly between the Earth and the Sun, at about 75 million km from the Sun.

The images were taken by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI). They show the Sun’s appearance at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, which is in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Images at this wavelength reveal the upper atmosphere of the Sun, the corona, with a temperature of around 1 million degrees. EUI takes images of the whole Sun using the Full Sun Imager (FSI) telescope, and high resolution images using the HRIEUV telescope.

On 2 March, a solar flare exploded from the Sun. It was rated as an M-class flare, the fourth highest out of five categories for solar flare intensity. The flare appears as a bright white patch that develops and expands rapidly in the final seconds of the video.