{"id":241107,"date":"2026-01-19T17:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T17:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/241107\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T17:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T17:22:10","slug":"proba-3-our-eyes-on-the-suns-inner-corona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/241107\/","title":{"rendered":"Proba-3: our eyes on the Sun\u2019s inner corona"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sun\u2019s inner corona, the hottest part of our star’s atmosphere, appears faint yellow in this time-lapse made from images taken by the ASPIICS coronagraph<\/a> aboard Proba-3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The European Space Agency\u2019s Proba-3 mission consists of two spacecraft capable of flying in precisely controlled formation to create artificial solar eclipses in orbit.<\/p>\n

This animation combines data from Proba-3\u2019s ASPIICS coronagraph (inner solar corona in yellow) and from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) aboard NASA\u2019s Solar Dynamics Observatory<\/a> (solar disc in dark orange).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe corona is extremely hot, about two hundred times hotter than the Sun’s surface,\u201d explains Andrei Zhukov from the Royal Observatory of Belgium, Principal Investigator for ASPIICS.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes, structures made of relatively cold plasma (charged gas) are observed near the Sun \u2013 although these are still around 10\u00a0000 degrees, they are much colder than the surrounding million-degree hot corona \u2013 creating what we call \u2018a\u00a0prominence<\/a>\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prominences can expand outwards from the Sun and \u2018erupt\u2019, breaking up and sending plasma in different directions.<\/p>\n

This animation resulted from ASPIICS observing the Sun during an active period on 21 September 2025, with one image taken every five minutes, capturing three prominence eruptions in five hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing so many prominence eruptions in such a short timeframe is rare, so I\u2019m very happy we managed to capture them so clearly during our observation window,\u201d adds Andrei.<\/p>\n

The ASPIICS instrument captures the solar corona with several filters, including two different \u2018spectral lines\u2019, each line corresponding to a different element contained in the coronal gases.<\/p>\n

The prominence eruptions seen in this animation were captured in the spectral line emitted by helium atoms, showing the solar atmosphere similarly to how a human eye would see it during a total eclipse through a yellow ASPIICS filter. The AIA image shows the emission in another spectral line produced by helium.<\/p>\n

The remaining faint yellow glow of the corona is a result of the scattering of visible light from the Sun’s surface on coronal electrons.<\/p>\n

A set of onboard positioning technologies allow the Proba-3 satellite duo to create solar eclipses in orbit. Thanks to this, the mission is able to observe the inner section of the Sun\u2019s corona<\/a>, providing scientists with the puzzle piece that has so far been missing from consistent solar observations.<\/p>\n

[Image description: This is a gif animation made up of false-colour images taken by ESA\u2019s Proba-3 mission and NASA\u2019s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Against a dark background, the Sun\u2019s disc is shown in dark orange, as captured by NASA\u2019s Solar Dynamics Observatory. A thin halo of yellow light surrounds the Sun, giving it a luminous outline against the dark background of space. This yellow outline shows the Sun\u2019s inner corona, as captured by Proba-3. Also in yellow, three solar prominence eruptions are visible, resembling bright yellow wave-like outburst extending outwards from the Sun. First, we can see a smaller one in the top right corner, followed by a larger one in the top left and a third one in the bottom right. The whole animation lasts about 4 seconds and plays in a loop.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sun\u2019s inner corona, the hottest part of our star’s atmosphere, appears faint yellow in this time-lapse made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-241107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}