Five years into its mission, Solar Orbiter offers a breathtaking view of the Sun’s million-degree atmosphere, known as the corona, in ultraviolet light.
This image captures glowing coronal loops around active regions and darker filaments that reveal cooler plasma. Creating such detail was no simple feat, requiring Solar Orbiter to map the Sun’s surface in a 5 x 5 grid on 9 March 2025, producing over 200 images. These were merged into the widest high-resolution solar view ever created, showcasing the Sun as a radiant golden sphere surrounded by swirling plasma. This achievement stems from an international collaboration between ESA and NASA, with Belgium’s Royal Observatory leading the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) project.
More: ESA