In our modern world, the consequences are much more dire: Scientists believe a similar solar storm could cause continent-wide power failures and destroy communication and navigation satellites orbiting Earth. The most powerful solar storm ever observed, the Carrington Event of 1859, was so strong that telegram wires spontaneously burst into flames. Solar storms are a critical field of study for the world's space agencies. (We're currently in a quiet period.) Solar Orbiter will also inspect the charge particles that ride on solar winds burped out by the sun and study how space weather creates powerful solar storms, called coronal mass ejections. In particular, scientists hope to find out what happens when the sun's magnetic field flips at the end of the 11-year solar cycle, where the sun switches between periods of high and low activity. The spacecraft will take a close look at the sun's poles, which are a relatively unstudied region of the star.

Solar Obiter is designed to survey the heliosphere, a giant plasma bubble that encapsulates the entire solar system. Solar Orbiter/EUI Team/ESA & NASA CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL 'We couldn't believe this when we first saw it.'Ī compilation of images taken by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on the Solar Obiter spacecraft. 'When you look at at high resolution, it's amazing in the smallest details how much stuff is going on there,' David Berghmans, the principal investigator of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, said in a July 16 press conference. The stunning photo and other images were taken during the spacecraft's inaugural close encounter with the sun, known as perihelion, in mid-June and capture a number of new, strange phenomena never before seen on the star at the center of our solar system. Today, the space agencies have announced that Solar Orbiter has taken the closest ever-image of the sun. On the way there, it's managed to snap some incredible photos. NASA and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter spacecraft is making a beeline for the sun.

Solar Orbiter is on a mission to study space weather and the sun's mysterious polar regions.The spacecraft launched on February 9, 2020, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.The European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter spacecraft has taken the closest ever image of the sun.

Solar orbiter sun photo