Humanity Takes Its First Look At the Sun's Poles (space.com) 16
The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter has captured the first-ever images of the sun's poles by tilting its orbit out of the ecliptic plane. Space.com reports: The captured images of the solar south pole were taken between March 16 and 17, 2025, with the Solar Orbiter's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), and Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instruments. They constitute humanity's first ever look at the sun's poles. This was the Solar Orbiter mission's first high-angle observation campaign of the sun, conducted at an angle of 15 degrees below the solar equator. Just a few days after snapping these images, the ESA spacecraft reached a maximum viewing angle of 17 degrees, which it sits in currently as it performs its first "pole-to-pole" orbit of our star. [...]
One of the first discoveries made by the Solar Orbiter is the fact that the magnetic fields around the sun's southern poles appear to be, for lack of a better phrase, a complete mess. While standard magnetic fields have well-defined north and south poles, these new observations reveal that north and south polarities are both found at the sun's southern pole. This seems to happen at solar maximum when the poles of the sun are about to flip. Following this exchange of poles, the fields at the north and south poles will maintain an orderly single polarity during solar minimum until solar maximum during the next 11-year cycle.
The Solar Orbiter observations also revealed that while the equator of the sun, where the most sunspots appear, possesses the strongest magnetic fields, those at the poles of our star have a complex and ever-changing structure. The Solar Orbiter's SPICE instrument provided another first for the ESA spacecraft, allowing scientists to track elements via their unique emissions as they move through the sun. Tracing the specific spectral lines of elements like hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, neon, and magnesium, a process called "Doppler measurement," revealed how materials flow through different layers of the sun. The Solar Orbiter also allowed scientists to measure the speed of carbon atoms as they are ejected from the sun in plumes and jets. "This is just the first step of Solar Orbiter's 'stairway to heaven.' In the coming years, the spacecraft will climb further out of the ecliptic plane for ever better views of the sun's polar regions," ESA's Solar Orbiter project scientist Daniel Muller said. "These data will transform our understanding of the sun's magnetic field, the solar wind, and solar activity."
One of the first discoveries made by the Solar Orbiter is the fact that the magnetic fields around the sun's southern poles appear to be, for lack of a better phrase, a complete mess. While standard magnetic fields have well-defined north and south poles, these new observations reveal that north and south polarities are both found at the sun's southern pole. This seems to happen at solar maximum when the poles of the sun are about to flip. Following this exchange of poles, the fields at the north and south poles will maintain an orderly single polarity during solar minimum until solar maximum during the next 11-year cycle.
The Solar Orbiter observations also revealed that while the equator of the sun, where the most sunspots appear, possesses the strongest magnetic fields, those at the poles of our star have a complex and ever-changing structure. The Solar Orbiter's SPICE instrument provided another first for the ESA spacecraft, allowing scientists to track elements via their unique emissions as they move through the sun. Tracing the specific spectral lines of elements like hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, neon, and magnesium, a process called "Doppler measurement," revealed how materials flow through different layers of the sun. The Solar Orbiter also allowed scientists to measure the speed of carbon atoms as they are ejected from the sun in plumes and jets. "This is just the first step of Solar Orbiter's 'stairway to heaven.' In the coming years, the spacecraft will climb further out of the ecliptic plane for ever better views of the sun's polar regions," ESA's Solar Orbiter project scientist Daniel Muller said. "These data will transform our understanding of the sun's magnetic field, the solar wind, and solar activity."
I'm Confuse (Score:2)
I'm confused. If it's orbiting at 17 degrees below the equator, how is it a pole-to-pole orbit?
Re: (Score:1)
It's enough latitude to directly image the poles, even though it's not flying directly over them. That's why the term is in quotes, I guess.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm confused. If it's orbiting at 17 degrees below the equator, how is it a pole-to-pole orbit?
Any orbit will be around the center of mass, so an orbit that gets to 17 degrees below the equator also means an orbit that gets 17 degrees above the equator. It will get a view of both poles, but apparently the most interesting things right now are at the south pole. How and why things differ between the poles is something they are investigating.
Re:I'm Confuse (Score:4, Funny)
Is it currently winter or summer at Sol Southern Pole?
Magnetic or rotational poles? (Score:1)
There are 3 sorts of Poles:
Rotational (the axis that the sun spins around)
Magnetic (the poles of the magnetic field. (The earth has its magnetic field not aligned with the geographic poles) -Dunno about the sun.
And the other sort of Poles live in the country between Germany and Ukraine
Didn't know (Score:1)
What about Ulysses (Score:5, Informative)
What about the Ulysses mission, the first solar polar orbiter?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:What about Ulysses (Score:5, Informative)
... OK, looking at old information sites about the mission, I see that while Ulysses looked at both solar poles with instruments like magnetometers and plasma probes, it didn't have a camera. So it made observations of the solar pole but this is the first mission to actually take images of the poles.
https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web... [esa.int]
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks. I was wondering the same thing.
Does this mean hydrogen is magnetic at extremely h (Score:2)
Re:Does this mean hydrogen is magnetic at extremel (Score:5, Informative)
At high enough temperatures, essentially anything can be magnetic, because they become plasma.
Plasmas allow for electrons to flow freely instead of being tightly bound to atoms.
Once you start moving electrons around, you have an electric current, and if that current's location or strength changes, it will have an associated magnetic field.
It's really tricky to fully model magnetic fields in the sun, because plasmas can be redirected by magnetic fields and they also generate them.
Re:Does this mean hydrogen is magnetic at extremel (Score:4, Informative)
At high enough temperatures any element will lose its electrons and you'll get a plasma. Since plasmas are soups of freely moving charges they'll be magnetic. Very much so.
They are not magnetic like iron is, it's a different mechanism.
Congrats Solar Orbiter & Mission Team! (Score:1)
Great, interesting new science expected.
I'm particularly interested to see if the Sun also exhibits the 'hexagons at poles' structures like Jupiter and Saturn.
pole-to-pole (Score:1)
...sounds a bit gay.
When they go look... (Score:1)
...I hope they land at night.