A stunning new image of the sun has been captured by the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Solar Orbiter mission. The image shows the atmosphere around the sun, called the corona, which can reach temperatures of up to 72 million degrees Fahrenheit and is even hotter than the sun’s surface.
Solar Orbiter took a total of 200 individual images of the sun, which were stitched together into the mosaic, which is the widest high-resolution image of the sun ever taken. Together, these images show the glowing hot gas which forms the outer atmosphere of the sun and which stretches for millions of miles beyond the sun’s surface.
“Obtaining such a detailed image is no easy feat,” ESA wrote. “On 9 March 2025, at around 77 million km from the Sun, the Solar Orbiter spacecraft was oriented to point to different regions across the Sun in a 5 x 5 grid. At each pointing direction, the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument captured six images at high resolution and two wide-angle views.”
You can see the full image below, with details like the yellow arcs coming from the sun’s surface which are created by the sun’s magnetic fields. Known as coronal loops, these features are seen above areas where the sun is particularly active, as these regions have the strongest magnetic fields. These fields shape the streams of charged particles give off by the sun, also creating structures like streamers and plumes.
Other features you can see in the image include dark sunspot regions and dark filament structures which are composed of relatively cool material in the atmosphere, and which can last for days or weeks.
Solar Orbiter was launched in 2020, and since then has made a number of close approaches to the sun. It has captured some stunning images of the face of the sun using its Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument, which works in the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is beyond the violet that our eyes can see.
This image was also captured in the ultraviolet, which is how the spacecraft is able to see the details of the sun’s upper atmosphere. It created an image that is a whopping 12,544 x 12,544 pixels in size, and if you head to ESA’s website you can see a zoomable version of the image with some key features highlighted.
