A solar probe launched by the European Space Agency in 2020 made its first close approach to the Sun and captured the chaotic encounter in dazzling detail. ESA’s Solar Orbiter, on March 26, reached the interior of the orbit of Mercury, the planet closest to our Sun. Encounters like this are known as perihelion, when a planet is closest to the life-giving Sun. However, one of the biggest challenges for a spacecraft reaching perihelion is withstanding the incredible heat. When the Solar Orbiter reached this point, it faced temperatures reaching up to 500 degrees Celsius, but its heat shield protected it.
The probe is expected to make more such encounters in the future when the temperature is expected to get even warmer. But a great advantage of perihelions is that they allow us to see the Sun as we have never seen it before. During its encounter with the Sun, ESA’s orbiter captured powerful flares, breathtaking views of the solar poles and a mysterious but spectacular solar ‘hedgehog’. All of this was made possible with the help of 10 scientific instruments aboard Solar Orbiter working together in close collaboration.
“The images are truly breathtaking,” David Berghmans of the Royal Observatory of Belgium said in an ESA statement. “Even if Solar Obiter stopped taking data tomorrow, I would be busy for years trying to figure this all out,” Berghmans added.
Scientists hope these observations will provide vital data for understanding the Sun’s behavior, including its chaotic magnetic fields and solar emissions. So far we have had limited success in studying the Sun’s poles, which may hold the key to understanding solar magnetic fields.
The enigmatic solar “hedgehog” is another puzzle in the mix. Scientists don’t know exactly what it is or how it forms. The hedgehog consists of a relatively small region about 25,000 km in diameter. It has a multitude of hot and cold gas spikes extending in all directions.
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