Eruptions, glowing rings and glowing clouds. All in amazing quality. These are the images of the Solar Orbiter, which was able to approach the Sun at 48 million kilometers and take detailed photos of the surface of the star. Czech experts are also to blame for its success.
The space probe headed into space on February 10, 2020. The nearly two-ton instrument took two years to reach the star. This March, the mission was successful. The European Space Agency (ESA) together with the American space agency NASA obtained the most detailed images of the Sun that the human eye has ever seen.
Solar Orbiter will approach the star every six months to a distance of about 42 million km. So it will be closer than the planet Mercury. It will also change its inclination, allowing it to observe the area around both poles. We can’t see them from our planet, but according to scientists, they are an important key to understanding solar activity. “Before the probe ends its mission, we will know more than ever what forces are responsible for the changing behavior of the Sun and its influence on Earth,” says ESA’s Science Director Günther Hasinger.
Solar Orbiter footage
What is important, however, is that the probe survives the intense high heat of around 500°C and the action of highly charged particles of the solar wind during seven years of research. That is why it is protected by a 30 cm thick titanium shield. Cameras take photos through holes in the heat shield.
A cosmonaut captured a wonderful atmospheric phenomenon. Watch the Earth glow blue
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Solar’s scientific goals include elucidating what causes the solar wind, how the coronal magnetic field is created, how solar phenomena drive heliospheric variability, how eruptions produce energetic particles, or how the stellar dynamo works. Ten instruments will help the probe to fulfill these tasks. Scientists from the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and Charles University and experts from selected companies participated in the production of four of them.
Thus, a spectrometer-telescope displaying X-ray sources was developed and constructed in Bohemia. Two main mirrors for observing the entire lower layer of the solar atmosphere, known as the corona in visible light and in the UV part of the spectrum, an instrument for measuring the electromagnetic field, plasma and radio waves in the solar wind, and a solar wind analyzer that will measure the density, speed and temperature of protons , helium nuclei and electrons.
Connecting the dots
By combining data from all the instruments, the science team will be able to create a detailed picture of solar activity from the surface of the star at least as far as the Solar Orbiter. This knowledge should help predict space weather conditions on Earth in real time. Once, a similar prediction even came true.
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Source: Youtube
Before the probe made its closest approach to the Sun, it detected several coronal mass ejections headed for Earth. Since it was in direct contact with our planet and its signals traveled at the speed of light, the data for analysis reached the experts within minutes.
Source:
www.vesmirprolidstvo.cz, www.avcr.cz, www.earthsky.org
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