This Is the Highest-Resolution Portrait of the Sun We’ve Ever Seen

Five years into its mission, NASA and ESA’s Solar Orbiter conscionable snapped what mightiness beryllium the crispest, astir elaborate full-Sun presumption humanity has ever seen.

The changeable above—in each its mesmerizing, dull-yellow grandeur—captures our Sun’s million-degree corona successful ultraviolet light.

Taken connected March 9, 2025, from astir 47.8 cardinal miles (77 cardinal kilometers) away, this representation isn’t a azygous beauteous picture. In fact, it’s a mosaic—stitched unneurotic from 200 idiosyncratic shots of the Sun, each of them captured by the spacecraft’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI). The effect is simply a 12,544-by-12,544-pixel megaportrait that lets you zoom successful (on the ESA site) and nerd retired similar ne'er before.

As elaborate connected the site, the representation showcases immoderate cardinal components of our star host. The tendrils shooting retired from the sphere are the star atmosphere—the corona—at wavelengths acold beyond what our eyes tin see. Closer to the star aboveground are dark, filamentous prominences—solar plasma—arcing with the Sun’s magnetic field. The prominences are astir 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit (10,000 degrees Celsius), a acold outcry from the million-degree corona.

The acheronian set crossed the beforehand of the Sun—making it look similar an ominous, fiery frowny face—is a star filament. The brighter spots connected the look of our prima are progressive regions connected its surface—the root of star flares and coronal wide ejections—and connected the close broadside of the prima you tin spot coronal loops, besides arcing with the magnetic field.

The associated Solar Orbiter ngo is portion of a larger effort to decode the chaotic dynamics of the star atmosphere—including however magnetic fields twist, snap, and sometimes motorboat solar storms that tin messiness with satellites and powerfulness grids backmost home.

While this representation dazzles our bare eyes, it’s besides affluent successful information for researchers chasing questions astir star heating, plasma behavior, and abstraction upwind forecasting.

But let’s beryllium real: It’s besides conscionable chill arsenic hell. We sent a spacecraft adjacent capable to the Sun to capture its piping blistery winds and unrecorded to archer the tale. Beyond that, it’s paying backmost the favour with gloriously high-res imagery. Hang it successful the Louvre.