The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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This animation shows five views of the Sun captured with the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) and Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instruments on ESA’s Solar Orbiter.
The first two views were taken with EUI’s Full Sun Imager (FSI) taken across the week following 30 May 2020. The yellow image shows the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, which exists at a temperature of around one million degrees. The red image shows the Sun’s transition region, which is an interface between the lower and upper layers of the solar atmosphere. In this region, which is only about 100 km thick, the temperature increases by a factor of up to 100 to reach the one million degrees of the corona.
The third, fourth and fifth views are based on data taken with PHI on 18 June 2020.
The third view is a ‘tachogram’ of the Sun, showing the line of sight velocity of the Sun, with the blue side turning to us and the red side turning away. The fourth view is a magnetogram, or a map of magnetic propertied for the whole Sun, featuring a large magnetically active region in the lower right-hand quadrant of the Sun. The fifth view is a visible light image and represents what we would see with the naked eye. There are no sunspots visible because the Sun is displaying only low levels of magnetic activity at the moment.
Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA.