PARIS: Scientists said on Thursday they had obtained the closest ever images taken of the Sun as part of a pan-European mission to study solar winds and flares that could have far-reaching impacts back on Earth.<\/p>\n
The European Space Agency\u2019s Solar Orbiter blasted off from Florida\u2019s Cape Canaveral in February and completed its first fly by of our star last month, sending back unprecedented images of phenomena close to its surface.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first images are exceeding our expectations,\u201d said Daniel Muller, Solar Orbiter project scientist at ESA.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can already see hints of very interesting phenomena that we have not been able to observe in detail before.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis makes us confident that Solar Orbiter will help us answer profound open questions about the Sun.\u201d In particular, the team observed dozens of miniature solar flares, known as \u201ccampfires\u201d, which until now had never been captured on film.<\/p>\n
David Berghmans, from Belgium\u2019s Royal Observatory, said the campfires were several million times smaller than solar flares, which can be observed from Earth.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, the smallest the team observed still measured around 400 kilometres across \u2014 \u201cabout the size of a small European country,\u201d said Berghmans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Sun seems relatively calm on first viewing but when you look at it in detail you can see miniature eruptions everywhere,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Solar winds and flares emit billions of highly charged particles that impact planets, including Earth.<\/p>\n
But the phenomena remain poorly understood despite decades of research.<\/p>\n
The largest solar storm on record hit North America in September 1859, knocking out much of the continent\u2019s telegraph network and bathing the skies in an aurora viewable as far away as the Caribbean.<\/p>\n
Solar ejections can also disrupt radar systems, radio networks and can even render satellites useless, though such extremes are rare.<\/p>\n
During its first orbit, the craft \u2014 developed in conjunction with NASA \u2014 travelled around 77 million kilometres (48 million miles) from the surface, about half the distance between the Sun and Earth.<\/p>\n
Equipped to withstand temperatures as high as 500 degrees Celsius (930 Fahrenheit), it will eventually travel as close as 40 million kilometres from the surface, protecting its instruments with a heat-resistant structure that will be exposed to sunlight 13 times stronger than on Earth.<\/p>\n
Its operators plan to gradually tilt the craft\u2019s orbit, enabling scientists to obtain the first ever images of the Sun\u2019s poles.<\/p>\n
Sami Solanki, director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, said the team was especially excited about images of the Sun\u2019s poles, which he described as \u201cterra incognita\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Solar Orbiter mission and is set to last up to nine years at a cost of some 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS: Scientists said on Thursday they had obtained the closest ever images taken of the Sun as part of a pan-European mission to study solar winds and flares that could have far-reaching impacts back on Earth. The European Space Agency\u2019s Solar Orbiter blasted off from Florida\u2019s Cape Canaveral in February and completed its first fly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4481,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4479\/revisions\/4481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}