The Sun doesn’t just account for much of Earth’s weather reports. It also causes space weather like solar flares and storms. These chaotic events can affect us all the way on Earth.
Eruptions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun — coronal mass ejections (CME) — can disrupt power grids on Earth, and even pose a danger to astronauts in space.
Solar Orbiter’s main mission doesn’t begin until November 2021, but in February it made a chance observation: a coronal mass ejection.
Because Solar Orbiter was on the other side of the Sun from Earth, it’s taken until now to receive and analyze the data it sent back home.
The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager captured the Sun’s corona in an ultraviolet wavelength.
The Metis coronagraph blocks the Sun to show the corona in visible light (left) and UV (right).
NASA’s STEREO-A spacecraft captured a coronagraph view from another angle.
A “running difference” view from Metis shows only what changes from one image to the next for a better sense of the CME’s motion.
With only one of its four detectors online, Solar Orbiter’s Heliospheric Imager captured a portion of the CME’s solar wind.
Remote imagers Proba-2 and SOHO saw the CME from the Earth side of the Sun.
This multi-instrument view shows the Solar Orbiter’s total picture of the CME.
Aside from surprise solar eruptions, Solar Orbiter is expected to record the first images of the Sun’s polar regions. Only time will tell if they live up to the mission’s auspicious start.