In July this year, The European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA released the first closest pictures ever taken of the Sun by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft. Solar Orbiter was launched by ESA with collaboration with NASA, on 10th February 2020 to study our closest star, the Sun. The spacecraft completed its first close pass of the Sun in mid-June of 2020.

These close-up pictures were taken by the spacecraft, approximately 48 million miles from the sun — which is about half the distance between Earth and the sun.

Holly Gilbert, NASA project scientist said “These unprecedented pictures of the Sun are the closest we have ever obtained. These amazing images will help scientists piece together the Sun’s atmospheric layers, which is important for understanding how it drives space weather near the Earth and throughout the solar system.”

The high-resolution images released, revealed tiny solar flares. David Berghmans, an astrophysicist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels called them as “campfires.”

“These campfires we are talking about here are the little nephews of solar flares, at least a million, perhaps a billion times smaller. They are literally everywhere we look.” said Berghmans.

For centuries our life-giving star has been an object of scientific interest, but its behavior still presents a puzzle for scientists. Solar Orbiter will take images of the Sun from close range than any spacecraft before and for the first time will look at its uncharted polar regions.

Locations of campfires are annotated with white arrows.

Photo courtesy of ESA and NASA.