Miami, Florida – A stunning new image captured by the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter reveals a fiery landscape on the surface of the sun, located about 93 million miles from Earth. Released on May 2, 2024, this close-up view showcases the chaotic transition zone between the sun’s chromosphere and corona – its outermost atmospheric layers. The image features a golden meadow stretching to the horizon, with fluffy moss, distant rainfall, and gargantuan plasma explosions towering larger than Earth itself.
In the image, brighter areas represent temperatures of 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit, while cooler regions appear relatively dark as they absorb radiation. This miniature gallery of extreme solar phenomena includes “coronal moss” structures formed at the bases of gigantic plasma loops riding the sun’s magnetic field lines high into the solar atmosphere.
Towering structures called spicules dance near the horizon, reaching thousands of miles above the sun’s surface, while dense blobs of plasma, known as coronal rain, tumble back down after rising high on coronal loops. An enormous eruption of plasma, taller than Earth, is also captured in the footage. These solar features result from disturbances in the sun’s magnetic field lines, which become more common near the peak of the sun’s 11-year activity cycle.
The Solar Orbiter captured this breathtaking footage from approximately 27 million miles away from the sun, while NASA’s Parker Solar Probe approached within 4.5 million miles on the same day. Both spacecraft monitored the extreme solar features and measured their radiation output simultaneously. This remarkable collaboration provided scientists with valuable insights into the sun’s dynamic behavior during periods of heightened solar activity.