THE Sun has been revealed as you’ve never seen it before.
A spacecraft has managed to snap the closest photo yet of our flaming star, marvelling scientists with superior detail.
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It exposes the fiery outer atmosphere – known as the corona – in amazing high quality that we haven’t seen before and could help experts unlock hidden secrets about the Sun.
The picture was taken on March 7 by the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter as it reached a very special point in its journey.
More than two years after launching, the spacecraft reached the halfway spot exactly between Earth and the Sun.
That’s about 46million miles away from both.
The photo wasn’t a fast feat either, taking over four hours to be captured.
This is because the orbiter got so close it needed to take 25 separate pictures, each taking about ten minutes, and piece them together into one big complete photo.
The image contains more than 83million pixels in a 9148 x 9112 pixel grid, which is ten times better than what a 4K TV can display.
Eventually, the orbiter will go even closer, at 26million miles away from the Sun, which is the closest any spacecraft with a camera has got.
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Working alongside the EUI (Extreme Ultraviolet Imager) is an instrument called SPICE (Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment).
Not only does this help piece together the images, but crucially traces the layers in the Sun’s atmosphere from the corona right down to a layer known as the chromosphere.
It spots out different wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light that come from various atoms.
Experts can then use this to look for extremely powerful eruptions that take place.
But they now hope to understand more about rising temperatures from different atmospheric layers.
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In other news, the new Harry Potter video game Hogwarts Legacy will feature some familiar faces despite being set hundreds of years before the majority of characters were even born.
A major Mars mission to find out whether life ever existed on the planet could be delayed by up to six years at best, as Europe scrambles to replace Russian parts.
Internet users have been urged not to use a popular piece of anti-virus software over fears it could be exploited by the Kremlin to spy or launch cyberattacks.
And Instagram could be planning to bring back a way to see what your friends like on the platform.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
