The first portrait of the 'sleeping' Sun begins to be created by the Solar Orbiter mission, created by the European Space Agency (ESA) and conducted in collaboration with NASA: just over seven months after the launch of the probe, the first data are published scientific data collected by three of the ten onboard instruments during a quiet phase of the star and processed by technicians in record time (just 90 days) despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
The publication occurs simultaneously with the release of a special issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics magazine describing the mission and its technologies.
Artist's impression of the European probe Solar Orbiter (source: ESA / Medialab)
"We wanted Solar Orbiter to be one of the most open space missions: this means making it accessible to the whole world, not just to the teams who made its instruments", explains Yannis Zouganelis of the ESA.
"Now any scientist from any country can access the data and use it for their own studies. There are already hundreds of scientists working together to interpret this unique data."
Three 'in situ' instruments collected them: the energy particle detector Epd (Energetic Particle Detector), the radio and plasma instrument Rpw (Radio and Plasma Waves) and the magnetometer (Mag).
Most of the data has been cleaned and calibrated manually, but in the near future this process will be automated, always under the supervision of technicians.