Solar Orbiter Captures First Clear Views of Sun’s South Pole—and It’s a Hot Mess A recent Venus flyby pushed the spacecraft out of Earth's orbital plane, allowing it to gaze at the solar poles.

The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter, which launched in 2020 from Cape Canaveral, captured the first-ever images of the sun's south pole.

The video titled 'EUI video SolarOrbiter Sun south pole' compares Solar Orbiter’s view (in yellow) with the one from Earth (grey), on 23 March 2025. At the time, Solar Orbiter was viewing the ...

However, the Sun's south pole exhibits a "messy" magnetism, with both north and south polarity fields present. The ESA explained that messy magnetism can develop quickly during each solar cycle.

Solar Orbiter’s latest data reveals the Sun’s magnetic south pole in a state of chaos, with a mix of north and south magnetic fields rather than a single dominant one, like on Earth.

The Solar Orbiter used Venus's gravity to help pull it out of the usual equatorial orbit around the Sun. Every time it passes Venus, the planet's massive gravitational force shoves it out of the ...

The first-ever images of the sun’s south pole have been captured by the robotic Solar Orbiter spacecraft. The European Space Agency (ESA) released images on Wednesday using three of Solar ...

We then rotate to Solar Orbiter’s tilted view, shown in yellow, and zoom in to the Sun’s south pole. Solar Orbiter used its Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument to take these images.

They show the sun's south pole from a distance of roughly 40 million miles (65 million km), obtained at a period of maximum solar activity. Images of the north pole are still being transmitted by ...

ESA The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter mission recently stunned the world with the first-ever full images of our Sun’s South pole, proving that this was going to be a mission like no other.

Solar Orbiter’s view of the magnetic fields around the sun’s south pole. Patches of blue and red mark the mixed magnetic fields in this region that characterize solar maximum.

This collage shows Solar Orbiter's view of the sun's south pole on 16–17 March 2025, from a viewing angle of about 15° below the solar equator. Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/PHI, EUI & SPICE ...