The magnetic field drives the formation of sunspots, cooler regions on the solar surface that appear as dark blotches. At the ...

The images come courtesy of a spacecraft called Solar Orbiter. Led by the European Space Agency (ESA) with contributions from NASA, Solar Orbiter launched in February 2020 and has been monitoring ...

Solar Orbiter used a slingshot flyby around Venus in February to get out of this plane to view the sun from up to 17 degrees below the solar equator. Future slingshot flybys will provide an even ...

But by tilting the Solar Orbiter's orbit out of that plane, the ESA was able to reveal the sun from a brand new angle. The process began in February 2025 when the Solar Orbiter passed closely by ...

And Solar Orbiter, with its highly inclined orbit, is seeing more details of the Sun’s magnetic field than ever before. Right now, the Sun is at a special time in its 11-year cycle, having ...

ESA's Solar Orbiter captured a "tube of cooler atmospheric gases snaking its way through the Sun’s magnetic field," according ...

Solar Orbiter used momentum from its flyby of Venus on February 18 to push itself out of the ecliptic plane that contains Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Around a month later, the spacecraft was ...

Just the third-ever confirmed interstellar object has been detected in our solar system. Here's what we know. (Spoiler: It's ...

Solar Orbiter first got a glimpse of the south pole on March 16 when it was 15 degrees below the solar equator. Throughout the following day, ...

The Solar Orbiter has been observing the sun since 2021, but it recently went on a side trip to Venus which significantly tilted its orbit and gave it a good view of the sun's polar region. That ...

The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter, which launched in 2020 from Cape Canaveral, captured the first-ever images of the sun's south pole.