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Last month total solar eclipse wasn’t the only fun in the sun the stars are enjoying this year. The European Science Agency just now dropped a hot new video of the solar corona, which is the upper layer of the sun’s atmosphere. The agency’s solar orbiter captured the footage on September 23, 2023, and the team has annotated the 30-second video to give viewers some context for what they’re seeing.
In just a few seconds, you’ll catch a glimpse of some coronal moss, bright gas that makes lacy patterns on the sun. A few seconds later, the ESA points out spicules along the horizon – peaks of gas that reach up through the solar chromosphere. These towers can reach a height of 10,000 kilometers or approximately 6,200 miles. The video also captures what appears to be a small eruption at the 22 second mark. “Small” is relative, as the ESA notes that the eruption was larger than Earth.
Read more: How the Apple Watch saved the solar eclipse for me
The clip ends with a flash of a coronal shower, which consists of clumps of high-density plasma that sizzle at a temperature of about 10,000 degrees Celsius (18,032 Fahrenheit). For context, the brighter coronal ring around the shower burns at 1 million degrees Celsius (1.8 million Fahrenheit). In short, rain showers in the sun are madness.
A snake crosses the sun
All in all, this is some of the best footage us skinny humans have ever seen of the sun. It comes courtesy of ESA’s Solar Orbiter and its extreme ultraviolet cameralaunched as part of the agency’s mission to capture close-up photos of the sun in ways never seen before. The mission began in 2020 with the launch of the solar orbiter and was captured amazing images of the sun in 2022, together with some footage from Earth, Mars and Venus.
Probably the most intense shot so far was that of a a massive solar flare which stretches millions of kilometers into space and later footage that looks like a slithering snake through the sun. According to NASAwhich assists the ESA, the serpentine effect is caused by the mixing of plasma and the sun’s magnetic field.
The mission also gave us the first-ever close-up images of the polar regions of the sun and measurements of the Sun’s solar winds, which are impossible to make on Earth.
Read more: Total solar eclipse 2024: The best pictures we’ve seen
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