For more than 60 years, various spacecraft and telescopes have been traveling through space to look at the Sun, capturing breathtaking images of the giant ball of hot gas at the heart of our solar system. However, our view of the star is limited by the plane of the Earth’s orbit, which allows us to observe the Sun’s equator up close, while its polar regions remain in an annoying blind spot. Solar Orbiter is the first to image the poles from outside the ecliptic plane, offering a rare glimpse into the Sun’s chaotic magnetic field.
On Wednesday, the European Space Agency (ESA) released the first clear images of the Sun’s south pole, showing that both north and south magnetic polarities are now present on the same side. The new images will help scientists better understand the Sun’s 11-year magnetic cycle and what drives its solar flares, which sometimes lead to geomagnetic storms on Earth.
Solar Orbiter used the momentum from a flyby of Venus on February 18 to push itself out of the ecliptic plane, which contains the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. About a month later, the spacecraft was able to see the star at an angle of 17 degrees below the solar equator – just enough to get a good look at the sun’s south pole for the first time.
“We didn’t know exactly what to expect from these first observations – the poles of the Sun are literally terra incognita,” said Sami Solanki, who leads the Solar Orbiter Polarimetric and Helioseismic Scanner instrument team from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany.
The science team used three instruments aboard the Solar Orbiter to image the Sun between March 16 and 17. Each instrument observes the Sun in a different way: the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) captures the Sun in visible light, the Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) captures the Sun in the ultraviolet, and the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument detects light emitted by charged gas above the Sun’s surface.
By combining the capabilities of all three instruments, the scientists saw that the Sun’s south pole is in a state of turmoil. Normally, each polar region has its own magnetic field characteristics. When the Sun reaches the period of solar maximum during its 11-year cycle, its magnetic polarity reverses: the north and south magnetic poles are reversed. During Solar Orbiter’s observations of the Sun, the polarity from the north and south poles is present at the south pole.
This marks a crucial moment in understanding the Sun’s activity. After the magnetic field flips, one polarity slowly builds up at the poles of the Sun, dominating the other. When the Sun reaches its solar minimum in about five to six years, the north and south poles will have their own magnetic polarity. “Exactly how this accumulation occurs is still not fully understood, so Solar Orbiter reached high latitudes at just the right time to follow this process from a unique and advantageous perspective,” Solanki said.
The scientists behind the mission used SPICE to measure how clumps of solar material move across the Sun’s surface. Using the Doppler effect, which describes the change in frequency of light or sound as it moves away from or closer to a source, the team created a velocity map that shows how the material’s speed changes between the poles and the equatorial region of the Sun. With the help of Solar Orbiter, scientists will be able to better understand why the solar wind moves faster at the poles than at the equator.
Solar Orbiter is just getting started. The recent observations are the first series of images obtained from the newly tilted orbit, but the spacecraft is preparing for its next flyby of Venus on December 24, 2026, which will further tilt its orbit to 23 degrees below the equator to get an even better view of the Sun’s poles.
“This is only the first step on Solar Orbiter’s ‘ladder to the sky’: in the coming years, the spacecraft will rise further out of the ecliptic plane to get an even better view of the Sun’s polar regions,” said Daniel Muller, ESA Solar Orbiter project scientist. “These data will change our understanding of the Sun’s magnetic field, solar wind and solar activity.”
