A SPACE probe recently had a close encounter with the Sun and stunning footage of the event have now been released.
The videos of the solar surface were captured by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter and provide a never-before-seen look at the Sun.
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The close encounter happened on March 26 and involved the space probe being 30 million miles away from the Sun.
In comparison, the Earth is about 93 million miles away from the Sun.
Being 30 million miles away may still sound far but the probe had to within stand temperatures of around 500 degrees Celsius (930 degrees Fahrenheit).
It was all worth it though as scientists got an unprecedented look at the solar surface and a mysterious feature they’re calling a ‘solar hedgehog’.
The ESA posted footage of the ‘solar hedgehog’ to YouTube.
The space agency explained in the caption: “The intriguing feature in the bottom third of the image, below the centre, has been nicknamed the solar hedgehog.
“At present no one knows exactly what it is or how it formed in the Sun’s atmosphere.
“The image was captured on 30 March 2022 by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) at a wavelength of 17 nanometres. Just days earlier, Solar Orbiter had passed through its first close perihelion.
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“At just 32 percent the distance of the Earth from the Sun, this placed the spacecraft inside the orbit of the inner planet Mercury.”
The gases you’re looking at in the prickly image are around 1million degrees
Scientists aim for the Solar Orbiter to get even closer to the Sun and hopefully reveal more of its secrets.
Daniel Müller, ESA Project Scientist for Solar Orbiter, said: “We are so thrilled with the quality of the data from our first perihelion.
“It’s almost hard to believe that this is just the start of the mission. We are going to be very busy indeed.”
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