The ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission has experienced its second rendezvous with the Sun.
Solar Orbiter was located at a distance of 0.29 AU from the Sun.
The corona is the outer atmosphere of the Sun.
The photo shows the dynamic nature of the solar corona, incandescent by a million degrees. The solar plasma is in constant motion, guided and accelerated by the magnetic field of the Sun.
Currently, the Sun is approaching the peak of its activity, the solar maximum, which it will reach in 2025. Thus, in the next few years, images of the “calm” crown are likely to become rare.
“I look forward to downloading data from all ten instruments over the next few weeks, and then the global scientific community will be very busy discovering new phenomena with this unique data set,” says Daniel Muller, ESA Solar Orbiter project scientist.