Did you see the first public image of the solar North Pole?

If you do a brief search - even on Google - of Sun images, you will come across hundreds (if not thousands!) Of them. However, until quite recently, there was no record of the solar poles. Yes, dear reader, but this is a thing of the past, as the European Space Agency released the first solar North Pole projection in history, and it is amazing (as are many other images captured on our Astro-King).

However, before we show the image, let us tell you how it was produced! Although it is easy to see our star - after all, it is there in the sky every day, and it is not enough to be cloudy so we can see it - due to the way the Earth orbits around it, observe the poles (north and south ) is not such an easy task. Incidentally, it is not simple even for the space probes that are sent to space to study the Sun.

Complex Capture

The North Pole image we are going to show, for example, was created from data collected by ESA's Proba-2 equipment during its observations. In reality, the spacecraft cannot "see" the solar poles directly as it is in orbit around the Earth - and therefore has not "clicked" a portion of photos.

But when the device obtains data from the solar atmosphere, it also records information beyond its line of sight, including the "bright disk" that extends around the Sun's main disk.

This bright halo is part of the solar atmosphere and thus encompasses the poles as well. Then, from the readings taken by the spacecraft, astronomers were able to understand what goes on there, estimate the characteristics of the solar atmosphere in these regions and intuit how it should look. We said it wasn't that simple! Anyway, check out the image:

Now, let us explain some features of the image above! The darkest spot in the disc crumb was produced by solar winds, and the "chubby" brightest region visible at the top right was created by a coronal hole rotating around the solar disc. And did you notice a line running through the center of the illustration across the surface of the pole? According to the European Space Agency, it arose as a result of the variations that occurred in the atmosphere in the intervals between one observation and another conducted by Proba-2.

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