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Welcome to ESA's Solar Orbiter Website for the Scientific Community

Remote-Sensing Windows for the first half of the year 2026 are now closed. Solar Orbiter is currently observing with a nominal synoptic program.
This year, the high latitude science phase will bring the spacecraft to a maximum latitude of 17°.

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News and Highlights

Turbulence in the Sun’s corona

26 September 2024 Solar wind is a never-ending stream of charged particles coming from the Sun. Rather than a constant breeze, this wind is rather gusty. As solar wind particles travel through space, they interact with the Sun's variable magnetic field, creating chaotic and fluctuating motion known as turbulence. read more

Science nugget: All microflares that accelerate electrons to high-energies are rooted in sunspots

25 September 2024 The acceleration of particles through the explosive release of magnetic energy is a ubiquitous phenomenon in plasmas throughout the Universe. Solar flares provide a unique laboratory for studying these processes. HXRs are considered the smoking guns of flare-accelerated electrons, serving as crucial diagnostic tools. They enable, among others,... read more

Science nugget: Connecting Solar Orbiter and L1 measurements of mesoscale solar wind structures to their coronal source using the Adapt-WSA model

25 September 2024 Mesoscale structures are important tracers of solar wind formation because they retain signatures of their heating at their low coronal source, their release, and their acceleration through the high corona. A key observable to investigate the formation of mesoscale structures is the plasma's heavy ion composition and charge states. Solar... read more

Science nugget: Modelling the global structure of a coronal mass ejection observed by Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe

18 September 2024 Reconstructing the global structure of coronal mass ejections is not a straightforward task: as CMEs propagate through the heliosphere, they may undergo many processes that can lead to fundamental alterations or deformations of their structure. To truly understand the global structure of ICMEs and their evolution as they propagate through the... read more

Solar Orbiter shows how solar wind gets a magnetic push

29 August 2024 ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft has provided crucial data to answer the decades-long question of where the energy comes from to heat and accelerate the solar wind. Working in tandem with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter reveals that the energy needed to help power this outflow is coming from large fluctuations in the Sun’s magnetic field. read more

Science nugget: Coordinated observations with the Swedish 1m Solar Telescope and Solar Orbiter

28 August 2024 The coordinated observations with Solar Orbiter took place in the period from October 12th to October 24th, 2023. Due to local seeing conditions and daily solar elevation in October, the observations were scheduled at 9 UT over 11 days in total. The weather conditions permitted observations on 7 of those 11 days. On 4 of these 7 days the seeing... read more

Science nugget: Multi-source connectivity drives heliospheric solar wind variability

21 August 2024 The remote-sensing observations and in situ measurements utilized in this analysis were taken as part of the Slow Solar Wind Connection Science Solar Orbiter Observing Plan. The Slow Wind SOOP operated for the first time during Solar Orbiter’s close perihelion passage in March 2022, when Solar Orbiter was at a close distance of approximately 0.5au. read more

Science nugget: Composition Mosaics from March 2022

14 August 2024 We focus our analysis on SPICE's first composition mosaic, taken on March 2, 2022 while SO was very close to its first perihelion, at around a heliocentric distance of 0.54 AU. We provide details on data and results, FIP-bias measurements, and future observation plans, building on previous methodologies for interpreting SPICE data. read more

Mark your calendars! Solar Orbiter Community Building webinars starting on 2/10/2024

12 July 2024 We are announcing the new Solar Orbiter Community Building webinars. The aim of these webinars is to provide news and insights on Solar Orbiter science and science operations to the wider solar and space physics communities. Starting on 2/10/2024. read more

Science nugget: Quantifying the diffusion of suprathermal electrons by whistler waves with Solar Orbiter

26 June 2024 In the solar wind, it is common to distinguish three categories of electron populations. The core represents the thermal electrons at low energies. The suprathermal electrons of the halo have higher energies and are often represented by kappa distributions. The Strahl is a beam of high-energy electrons that follows the magnetic field lines,... read more

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Upcoming Events

22-24 September 2026: Solar Orbiter SWT-43, online + ESTEC (NL)

2-6 Novembre 2026: European Space Weather Week (Check SOL2 for the relevant session with Solar Orbiter)

16-18 March 2026: Solar Orbiter SWT-44, ASI (IT)

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