A spacecraft from the European Space Agency has captured new video of the sun’s surface, showing plasma swirling on the star’s “otherworldly” surface, according to a news release from the organization.
The ESA said the images were captured by the Solar Orbiter, which was launched in February 2020 and has spent the past several years releasing images from its place near the sun.
The orbiter has also taken the closest-ever images of the sun and its polar regions, the ESA said online.
In the video, the surface of the sun appears furred with dark yellow material as beams of gold swoop overhead.
The hair-like structures are made of plasma, which follow the magnetic fields that emerge from the interior of the sun.
Beyond the structures, the orbiter even captured an eruption on the sun’s surface.
The event appears small, appearing in the middle of the video around the 20-second mark, but the ESA said the eruption is bigger than Earth.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe was also examining the sun the same day the video was taken, measuring particles and the magnetic field around the star.
According to a press release from the agency, new footage of the sun’s surface taken by a spacecraft belonging to the European Space Agency shows plasma swirling on the star’s “otherworldly” surface.
The Solar Orbiter, which was launched in February 2020 and has been releasing pictures from its location close to the sun for the past few years, is said to have taken the pictures, according to the ESA. Additionally, the ESA reported online that the orbiter had captured the closest-ever pictures of the sun and its polar regions.
On September, the orbiter “filmed the transition from the Sun’s lower atmosphere to the much hotter outer corona,” which resulted in the new images. 27, 2023, according to the ESA.
In the video, beams of gold appear to swoop overhead, and the surface of the sun appears furred with dark yellow material. The plasma that makes up the hair-like structures follows the magnetic fields that emanate from the sun’s interior. Spicules, which are gas spires that can soar to heights of over 6,000 miles, are the swooping structures. Previous photos of the area do not have the “exquisite detail” that these images have.
An element known to the ESA as “coronal’moss,'” which usually forms at the base of objects too hot for cameras to see, is visible in the lower left corner of the video.
The orbiter managed to capture an eruption on the solar surface, in addition to the structures. The ESA claimed that the eruption was larger than Earth, despite the fact that it only seems minor and appears in the middle of the video at the 20-second mark. Cooler material, which appears darker and absorbs solar radiation, is lifted upward during the eruption and then descends once again.
A coronal rain that cools the area occurs after the eruption. The agency stated that the rain, composed of plasma clumps that return to the sun’s surface, is “probably less” than 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit and appears dark in comparison to the large coronal loops, which have a temperature of approximately 1,800,032 degrees Fahrenheit.
As part of the spacecraft’s mission to discover more about the sun, the unparalleled images were made public. On the day that the video was captured, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe was also conducting observations of the sun, measuring particles and the surrounding magnetic field. As per the ESA, the two missions collaborated to quantify a solar wind that passed over the region.
