Every image you’ve ever seen of the sun is looking at its equator, because Earth’s orbit sits there with a 7.25-degree tilt. That means humans have never had a good angle to view the sun’s north and south poles until now. The European Space Agency has released images of the sun’s north and south poles, giving everyone their first glimpse at the top and bottom of our nearest star.
The imagery was taken by the ESA’s Solar Orbiter, which began its trek to view the sun’s polar regions in 2020. To do this, the Orbiter engaged its boosters, made some adjustments, and slingshotted itself around Venus at a staggering 27,000 miles per hour.
Once it reached its destination, it took images using its Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), and the Spectra Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument.
“Today we reveal humankind’s first-ever views of the sun’s poles,” said Professor Carole Mundell, ESA director of science, in a blog post. “The sun is our nearest star, giver of life and potential disruptor of modern space and ground power systems, so it is imperative that we understand how it works and learn to predict its behavior. These new, unique views from our Solar Orbiter mission are the beginning of a new era of solar science.”
See the Solar Orbiter’s stunning sun view
The sun’s poles.
The images are viewable above or in a YouTube video on ESA’s channels. In the video, you can see the view that we Earthlings generally see before the video transitions to the solar orbiter’s viewpoint and zooms in so you can see the bottom of the sun in all of its hot, fiery glory. The video is only 50 seconds long, but it’s 50 seconds of footage that humans have never seen before.
Most of the ESA’s images and videos are of the sun’s south pole, but the blog post includes imagery of the north pole as well. For the most part, scientists had no idea what to expect from the data, given that this is the first time any human had seen it before.
The full dataset from the Orbiter’s first pole-to-pole adventure is set to reach Earth by October 2025, which will give scientists much more to work with in terms of understanding how the sun works. Future orbits will include measurements from all 10 of the Orbiter’s tools, so even more information is coming over the next few years.
