This Is the Highest-Decision Portrait of the Solar We’ve Ever Seen

5 years into its mission, NASA and ESA’s Photo voltaic Orbiter simply snapped what is perhaps the crispest, most detailed full-Solar view humanity has ever seen.

The shot above—in all its mesmerizing, dull-yellow grandeur—captures our Solar’s million-degree corona in ultraviolet gentle.

Taken on March 9, 2025, from about 47.8 million miles (77 million kilometers) away, this picture isn’t a single fairly image. Actually, it’s a mosaic—stitched collectively from 200 particular person pictures of the Solar, every of them captured by the spacecraft’s Excessive Ultraviolet Imager (EUI). The result’s a 12,544-by-12,544-pixel megaportrait that permits you to zoom in (on the ESA site) and nerd out like by no means earlier than.

As detailed on the positioning, the picture showcases some elementary elements of our photo voltaic host. The tendrils taking pictures out from the sphere are the photo voltaic ambiance—the corona—at wavelengths far past what our eyes can see. Nearer to the photo voltaic floor are darkish, filamentous prominences—photo voltaic plasma—arcing with the Solar’s magnetic discipline. The prominences are roughly 18,000 levels Fahrenheit (10,000 levels Celsius), a far cry from the million-degree corona.

The darkish band throughout the entrance of the Solar—making it appear to be an ominous, fiery frowny face—is a photo voltaic filament. The brighter spots on the face of our star are energetic areas on its floor—the supply of photo voltaic flares and coronal mass ejections—and on the precise facet of the star you’ll be able to see coronal loops, additionally arcing with the magnetic discipline.

The joint Photo voltaic Orbiter mission is a component of a bigger effort to decode the chaotic dynamics of the photo voltaic ambiance—together with how magnetic fields twist, snap, and generally launch solar storms that may mess with satellites and energy grids again house.

Whereas this picture dazzles our bare eyes, it’s additionally wealthy in information for researchers chasing questions on photo voltaic heating, plasma habits, and house climate forecasting.

However let’s be actual: It’s additionally simply cool as hell. We despatched a spacecraft shut sufficient to the Solar to capture its piping hot winds and survive. Past that, it’s paying again the favor with gloriously high-res imagery. Hold it within the Louvre.