Look: ESA captures remarkable images of a “hedgehog” structure on the Sun

Glow up A hedgehog on the Sun? It’s more likely than you think. by Jennifer Walter Updated: Feb. 20, 2024 Originally Published: May 18, 2022 Solar Orbiter/EUI Team (ESA & NASA); CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL

NASA/ESA Staring into the Sun is dangerous — unless you’re an orbiter full of metals and coated in a layer of protective calcium phosphate.

And the orbiter’s ability to get up close and personal is giving us a new view of our home star’s surface.

ESA For ESA’s Solar Orbiter, getting blasted by the Sun’s energy is no sweat.

At the end of March, Solar Orbiter had a close encounter with the Sun as it cruised within Mercury’s orbit.

Solar Orbiter/EUI Team (ESA & NASA); CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL This week, the European Space Agency released a trove of new videos and photos from that encounter, including the sharpest view ever captured of the Sun’s south pole.

But researchers are able to color code features on the Sun using Solar Orbiter’s data in order to give us an accurate representation of what the surface looks like.

NASA/SDO Much of the Sun’s energy is emitted at wavelengths invisible to the human eye.

Here is the Sun’s South Pole, glowing in all its glory.

ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team

Solar Orbiter also got an up-close look at a solar flare at the beginning of March.

This view shows the flare rising from the Sun’s surface, with its hottest emissions in blue.

ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI & STIX Teams

The lowest-energy X-rays are represented in red.

Shutterstock Solar Orbiter also captured a strange phenomenon new to science, nicknamed a solar hedgehog.

See those spikes below the center, which appear similar to a hedgehog’s?