Spacecraft snaps closest pictures of sun, ‘campfires’ abound

This image, provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) on Thursday, July 16, 2020, shows the Sun. The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft took this image on 30 May 2020. It shows the Sun's appearance at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, which is in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. During an online press briefing with Solar Orbiter mission experts, the first images from ESA's new Sun-observing spacecraft were released on Thursday. (Solar Orbiter/EUI Team (ESA & NASA); CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL/ via AP) This image, provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) on Thursday, July 16, 2020, shows the Sun. The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft took this image on 30 May 2020. It shows the Sun's appearance at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, which is in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. During an online press briefing with Solar Orbiter mission experts, the first images from ESA's new Sun-observing spacecraft were released on Thursday. (Solar Orbiter/EUI Team (ESA & NASA); CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL/ via AP)

By MARCIA DUNN / Associated Press July 16, 2020 2 min read

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – A European and NASA spacecraft has snapped the closest pictures ever taken of the sun, revealing countless little “campfires” flaring everywhere.

Scientists on Thursday released the first images taken by Solar Orbiter, launched from Cape Canaveral in February.

The orbiter was about 48 million miles (77 million kilometers) from the sun – about halfway between Earth and the sun – when it took the stunning high-resolution pictures last month.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is flying much closer to the sun than Solar Orbiter – too close for cameras to safely photograph the sun. Its lone camera faces away from the sun to observe the solar wind.

That’s why Solar Orbiter’s new pictures showing vibrant swirls of yellow and dark smoky gray – the first images from so close and at such small scale – are so precious. The team had to create a new vocabulary to name these tiny flare-ups, said European Space Agency project scientist Daniel Muller.