A new way to view the Sun

Scientists have used the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) in a new mode of operation to record part of the Sun’s atmosphere that has been almost impossible to image until now. By covering the Sun’s bright disc with an ‘occulter’ inside the instrument, EUI can detect the million-times fainter ultraviolet light coming from the surrounding corona. This movie shows an ultraviolet image of the Sun’s corona taken using the EUI occulter. An ultraviolet image of the Sun’s disc has been superimposed in the middle, in the area left blank by the occulter. The image of the Sun’s disc has been taken by NASA’s STEREO mission, which happened to be looking at the Sun from almost the same direction as Solar Orbiter at the same time, so the features on the surface have a good correlation to the features in the corona. The grid pattern is an artifact caused by the mesh that is holding the 150 nm thick front-filter. It is invisible in regular images but present (as expected) in occulter mode. The ’WOW-enhanced’ label next to the time counter in the lower left corner stands for the ‘Wavelets Optimized Whitening’ algorithm which enhances the visual appearance of the movie. Read more 👉 Credits: Corona: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team; F. Auchère et al (2023); Solar disc: NASA/STEREO ★ Subscribe: and click twice on the bell button to receive our notifications. Check out our full video catalog: Follow us on Twitter: On Facebook: On Instagram: On LinkedIn: On Pinterest: On Flickr: We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out to get up to speed on everything space related. Copyright information about our videos is available here: #ESA #Sun #SolarOrbiter