Solar Orbiter makes first close approach to the Sun

ESA's Sun-exploring mission Solar Orbiter, which carries instruments proposed, designed and built at UCL, has made its first close approach to the Sun on June 15, getting as close as 77 million km to the star's surface, about half the distance between the Sun and Earth. In the week following this first perihelion, the point in the orbit closest to the Sun, the mission scientists will test the spacecraft's ten science instruments to prove that Solar Orbiter's telescopes are ready for future scientific observations. The suite of instruments includes the six telescopes, which will acquire close-up images of the Sun in unison for the first time. Set to be released in mid-July, they will be the closest images of the Sun ever captured. The aim is to put together the images from all of Solar Orbiter's telescopes to see how they take complementary data of the various parts of the Sun including the surface, the outer atmosphere, or corona, and the wider heliosphere around it. UCL is a Co-Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) - a suite of telescopes that will provide images of the hot and cold layers of the Sun's atmosphere and corona, showing the dynamics in fine detail and providing the link between the Sun's surface and outer corona. Dr David Long (UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory), Co -Principal Investigator on the ESA Solar Orbiter Mission EUI Investigation, said:  "It's incredibly exciting that we are getting high resolution pictures of the Sun from closer than ever before, which will give us a new insight into the relationship between the different layers of the solar atmosphere.