Solar Orbiter gets world-first views of the Sun’s poles

11 June 2025

Thanks to its newly tilted orbit around the Sun, the European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft is the first to image the Sun’s poles from outside the ecliptic plane. Solar Orbiter’s unique viewing angle will change our understanding of the Sun’s magnetic field, the solar cycle and the workings of space... read more

Science Nugget: Ubiquitous threshold for coherent structures in solar wind turbulence

11 June 2025

As the solar wind expands, it is heated by a mechanism that is yet to be determined. Turbulence is the chaotic flow of the solar wind plasma, which transports energy from large scales to small, kinetic scales. Turbulence is one possible heating mechanism [1]. Coherent structures, which have temporal coherence in the turbulent flow and are... read more

Science Nugget: Energetic proton bursts downstream of an interplanetary shock

4 June 2025

Interplanetary shocks are well-established sources of energetic charged particles from tens of keV to several MeV (e.g., [1]). Despite extensive research, detailed mechanisms and processes of proton acceleration at interplanetary shocks continue to pose challenges. Recent high-resolution measurements from the Energetic Particle Detector (EPD;... read more

Science Nugget: A prolific flare factory: Nearly continuous monitoring of an active region nest with Solar Orbiter

21 May 2025

ESA's Solar Orbiter mission provides a unique opportunity to study the Sun's magnetic activity across its entire surface as it spends a few months each year observing the far side from Earth [1]. This vantage point complements Earth-based observations allowing for nearly continuous monitoring of solar activity. Magnetic activity on the Sun’s... read more

Science Nugget: Multi-spacecraft Radio Observations Trace the Heliospheric Magnetic Field

14 May 2025

Solar flares accelerate energetic electrons that escape into interplanetary space, guided by the Parker spiral magnetic field, and are responsible for the generation of the interplanetary Type III solar radio bursts. With multiple spacecrafts now in orbit around the Sun, we are in a unique position of observing the propagation of radio... read more

Science Nugget: Source of Solar Energetic Particles with the Largest 3He Enrichment Ever Observed

7 May 2025

On October 24, 2023, ESA/NASA’s Solar Orbiter recorded the highest-ever enrichment of 3He in solar energetic particles. This rare isotope, which is lighter than the more common 4He by just one neutron, is scarce in our Solar System— typically found at a ratio of about one 3He ion per 2,500 4He ions [1]. However, solar jets appear to... read more

Solar Orbiter’s widest high-res view of the Sun

24 April 2025

Five years into its mission, Solar Orbiter stuns again with this detailed view of the Sun. What you see is the Sun’s million-degree hot atmosphere, called the corona, as it looks in ultraviolet light.  

Dive in and explore the hot plasma (charged particles) caught in the Sun’s messy magnetic field. Can you spot the glowing... read more

Science Nugget: High-Resolution Observations of Clustered Dynamic Extreme-Ultraviolet Bright Tadpoles near the Footpoints of Coronal Loops

23 April 2025

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter (SolO) [1], launched in February 2020, has ushered in a groundbreaking era of solar observation by capturing high-resolution images from unprecedented proximity to the Sun. On March 26, 2022, SolO reached its perihelion, i.e., the closest approach to the Sun, positioning the spacecraft within... read more

Science Nugget: Bursty acceleration and 3D trajectories of electrons in a solar flare

9 April 2025

Solar flares are the sudden explosion occurring in the sun’s atmosphere due to reconnection of magnetic field lines and emit radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio end even up to gamma ray frequencies. During the flare, accelerated electrons propagate upwards and downwards from the energy release site along magnetic field... read more

Science Nugget: Picoflare jets in the coronal holes and their link to the solar wind

2 April 2025

Charged particles continuously stream out from the million Kelvin hot corona as the solar wind. High-resolution extreme ultraviolet observations from the Solar Orbiter are providing new insights into the generation process of the solar wind. In particular, high-speed jets are observed to be widespread in darker interiors of coronal holes... read more