For the first time in history, humanity has laid eyes on the poles of the Sun, thanks to a bold maneuver by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft.
Key Points at a Glance
- Solar Orbiter has captured the first-ever images of the Sun’s poles from outside the ecliptic plane
- The spacecraft’s new viewing angle offers a revolutionary perspective on the Sun’s magnetic field and space weather
- Instruments detected chaotic magnetic fields and high-velocity material flows at the south pole
For centuries, our view of the Sun has been limited to its equator. But that era has just ended. The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter has tilted its orbit to peek beneath the solar equator, offering humanity its first direct look at the Sun’s elusive poles. And the results are already rewriting what we know about our star.
On March 23, 2025, from a unique 17° angle below the equator, the Solar Orbiter snapped groundbreaking images of the Sun’s south pole. These photos, taken by the spacecraft’s cutting-edge instruments—including the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), and the SPICE spectrograph—uncovered a chaotic, unstructured magnetic field that shocked scientists.
“This is literally terra incognita,” said Prof. Sami Solanki of the Max Planck Institute, who leads the PHI team. Instead of a neatly defined magnetic polarity, PHI detected a tangled web of opposing fields—proof that the Sun is currently undergoing a magnetic flip. This discovery could finally help scientists understand the mysterious 11-year solar cycle that governs everything from auroras to satellite disruptions.
The EUI revealed a corona boiling with million-degree plasma, while SPICE captured stunning maps of gas flows in the Sun’s transition region, where temperatures skyrocket from 10,000°C to hundreds of thousands. For the first time, Solar Orbiter measured how fast this plasma moves using Doppler techniques, shedding light on how the solar wind is born and accelerated into space.
These unprecedented insights wouldn’t be possible without Solar Orbiter’s unique orbit. While every other solar mission orbits in the flat ecliptic plane shared by Earth and other planets, Solar Orbiter broke free in February 2025 to begin its “high latitude” journey. The result: a radically new perspective, capturing views no other spacecraft has ever seen.
“This mission is our stairway to heaven,” said ESA project scientist Daniel Müller. And the best is yet to come. In 2026, a flyby of Venus will boost Solar Orbiter’s inclination to 24°, and by 2029, it will soar to a 33° tilt, offering even clearer views of the polar mysteries.
Understanding the Sun’s magnetic field and solar wind isn’t just academic. These forces shape space weather, which can disrupt satellites, power grids, and communication systems on Earth. By seeing the poles directly, scientists hope to build better models for predicting solar activity—an urgent task in our tech-dependent world.
Solar Orbiter’s images don’t just push the frontier of space science—they open a new chapter in our relationship with the star that gives us life.
Source: European Space Agency
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