SESDA Supports ESA/NASA in First Returns of Solar Orbiter Data
July 16, 2020
Solar Orbiter spots ‘campfires’ on the Sun. Locations of campfires are annotated with white arrows. Credits: Solar Orbiter/EUI Team (ESA & NASA); CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL
Solar Orbiter is a new collaborative mission between ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA to obtain detailed observations of the polar regions of the Sun. It was launched in February 2020 from Cape Canaveral with a scientific payload of 10 different instruments. One of these instruments is the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) spectrometer which was built with the support of SESDA staff at GSFC. The mission just released its first new images to the public, including the closest (48 million miles) pictures ever taken of the Sun. These high-resolution images reveal evidence of ubiquitous brightenings or “campfires” dotting the Sun. The SPICE instrument will play a crucial role in understanding the physical nature of these campfires by providing precise measurements of their temperature.
