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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The intriguing feature in the bottom third of the image, below the centre, has been nicknamed the solar hedgehog. At present no one knows exactly what it is or how it formed in the Sun’s atmosphere. The image was captured on 30 March 2022 by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) at a wavelength of 17 nanometres. Just days earlier, Solar Orbiter had passed through its first close perihelion. At just 32 percent the distance of the Earth from the Sun, this placed the spacecraft inside the orbit of the inner planet Mercury.
Being closer to the Sun than any previous solar telescope has allowed EUI to take exquisitely detailed images of the solar atmosphere. These are revealing the Sun as never before, and have shown a multitude of intriguing features such as the hedgehog, which although classed as a small-scale feature still measures some 25 000 km across, making it around twice the diameter of the Earth.
The gases shown in this image have a temperature of around one million degrees. The image has been colour coded because the original wavelength detected by the instrument is invisible to the human eye. Watch movies of the solar hedgehog here and here.