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 image shows the Sun in visible light. It was taken by the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) onboard the Solar Orbiter spacecraft on 22 March 2023. The instrument collected red light with a wavelength of 617 nanometres.
What you see is the visible surface of the Sun, also called the photosphere. Almost all radiation from the Sun comes from this layer, which has a temperature between 4500 and 6000 °C. Beneath it, the hot, dense plasma is churned around in the ‘convection zone’ of the Sun, not unlike magma in Earth's mantle.
The most striking features in this image are the sunspots. These look like dark spots, or holes, in the otherwise smooth surface. Sunspots are regions where the Sun's magnetic field breaks through. This inhibits the plasma’s convection because charged particles are forced to follow the magnetic field rather than following the heat-mixing convective flow. As a result, sunspots are colder than their surroundings and send out less light.
Assembled from multiple high-resolution images taken by the PHI instrument, the diameter of the Sun's disc is spanned by around 8000 pixels. It is one image of a set of four, three being the first high-resolution full-disc views of the Sun from PHI and the fourth an image of the Sun's corona taken by Solar Orbiter's Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI).