The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter spacecraft has released its most detailed portrait yet of the Sun, revealing intricate details that stretch thousands of miles above the surface. The image, captured on March 9, 2025, shows a mosaic of 12,544×12,544 pixels that could fit over 1,000 Earths side by side.
The view comes from Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager, which gathered data from about 48 million miles away. The image captures millions-degree plasma bubbles in magnetic loops, as well as yellow filaments and bright arcs that are invisible to the naked eye.
Solar Orbiter has been on a seven-year mission to study the Sun, with its closest approach being just 0.28 astronomical units – roughly 26 million miles – from the surface. The spacecraft uses instruments designed by NASA and ESA to track magnetic fields, particle counts, and plasma temperatures.
The new image reveals more about the Sun’s weather engine, including towering magnetic loops that can trigger solar storms. By studying these events, scientists aim to improve solar-storm warnings, allowing engineers to protect hardware and mitigate disruptions to our daily lives.
Solar Orbiter is currently looping closer to the Sun, with its orbit expected to reach 33 degrees above the solar equator by the end of the decade. Future observations will provide humanity’s first sustained look at the poles and shed light on the long-standing mystery of why the outer atmosphere blazes so much hotter than the visible surface.
The spacecraft is now poised for its next close flyby, with each pass bringing it closer in both miles and insight to the Sun’s forces that shape our skies.
Source: https://www.earth.com/news/widest-high-resolution-photo-of-the-sun-ever-captured-solar-orbiter