ESA’s Solar Orbiter Unveils First View of the Sun’s Mysterious South Pole
The European Space Agency has released an image showing the south pole of the Sun. This image was taken on March 23, 2025, but was revealed yesterday on June 11, 2025. These new images from the Solar Orbiter spacecraft show a view of the Sun that has never been recorded before. Solar Orbiter spent its last months tilting its orbit to 17 degrees underneath the solar equator, bringing the elusive south pole to view, which could never be done before.
Images Found had Visible UV Wavelengths
Carolle Mundell, the director of Science, told Live Science that today, we reveal the first ever views of the Sun’s pole by humankind. The new images caught the solar pole in broader, visible and ultraviolet wavelengths, with the help of three of the Solar Orbiter’s 10 instruments. These caught colourful confetti of the Sun’s data, with fathomable tangles of its magnetic field. It flips with high velocity movement of chemicals and makes up the solar wind.
Flips of the Magnetic Field Due to Solar Activity
According to ESA, these data will provide an understanding of the solar wind, space weather and the 11-year activity of the Sun. Through the measurement of the Solar Orbiter’s Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager instrument, the Sun can be seen as throwing out flares in overdrive during the period of peak activity.
This mess of magnetic fields is temporary and flips after every 11 years. This signifies the end of the maximum solar activity and the beginning of the transition towards the relative calm of the next solar minimum. Further, after five to six years, when the solar minimum begins, the Sun’s poles show only one type of magnetic polarity.
First Step towards the Sun
With the coming years, there will be many stances for the Solar Orbiter to test further. Through the little help of the gravitational pull of Venus, it will tilt its orbit again from the solar equator to 24 degrees in December 2026, 33 degrees in June 2029. This will help us know the Sun from different regions and, in turn, know about the magnetic field, solar wind and activity.
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The gas giant TOI-2109b is more than five times as massive as Jupiter, and resides in a perilous orbit 870 light-years from our planet. As an “ultrahot Jupiter,” it completes a lap around its parent star in a mere 16 hours, the briefest orbit of any such planet known. It is baking its atmosphere to broiling temperatures, and inching closer to oblivion in an orbit that is slowly pulling it in toward its parent sun. Using archived space telescope data from TESS and Cheops, astronomers have observed the testimony of this inevitable spiral, and contemplated three (wildly divergent) possible fates of the doomed planet.
Fates for TOI-2109b
According to the new research, conducted with data from NASA’s TESS and ESA’s Cheops missions shows that TOI-2109b’s orbit is decaying — a process it will continue for thousands of Earth’s years to come by 10 seconds over three Earth years. This proves that it is in a process of slow in fall. If the decay becomes worse, the planet may start falling directly into its host star and create a luminous flare, just like ZTF SLRN-2020. Alternatively, the star’s tidal forces could permanently warp the planet and rip it asunder.
A Potential Planetary Rebirth
There is a third, less-tragic possibility which could happen through a process of photoevaporation, in which strong radiation from the hosting star removes TOI-2109b’s gaseous envelope to reveal its rocky core. If the planet shrinks quickly enough, it might survive the process, avoiding its destruction by spiraling within its eternal Roche limit, and settling as a super-Earth or Neptune-sized blow-up hard relic. Then TOI-2109b would be an odd, rare opportunity to witness up close how this process unfolds.
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TOI-2109b, ultrahot Jupiter, exoplanet death spiral, TESS, Cheops, super-Earth, planetary evolution, space science, astronomy, NASA, ESA
The Hubble Space Telescope has taken its initial shots of comet 3I/ATLAS, a comet visiting us from beyond our solar system that recently fell apart — but not before it struck a pose for the cameras. It’s only the third such object ever known, after 1I/ʻOumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. The subject of numerous scientific tweets and some frantic searches by astronomers anxious to figure out just what it is — and where it came from — before it is gone into the pitch black of deep space forever, 3I/ATLAS was first sighted by the ATLAS survey telescope on July 1, 2025.
Ancient Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Offers Clues to Planetary Systems Beyond Our Own
According to As per Space.com, recent studies indicate that 3I/ATLAS could be some 7 billion years old, well beyond the 4.6 billion years of our solar system. That’s an indication that the comet arose in the more ancient parts of the Milky Way, which would give researchers a rare glimpse of what the early days of other planetary systems were like. Undergraduate researcher Astrafoxen first flagged the Hubble images on Bluesky, noting the comet’s “nice and puffy” coma, despite interference from cosmic rays.
A newly available preprint paper has already revealed that 3I/ATLAS contains abundant water ice and a dust makeup resembling D-type asteroids—organic-rich bodies typically found in the outer solar system. Unlike ultrared trans-Neptunian objects, D-types are believed to have high carbon and silicate content, potentially shedding light on the comet’s deep-space origins and volatile chemistry.
The comet 3I/ATLAS was discovered just as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory was gearing up to carry out its initial observations of the heavens, dovetailing with the LSST’s expected discovery of many more interstellar objects in the coming decade.
Until then, 3I/ATLAS holds the astronomical spotlight. Its brief solar system passage offers a precious opportunity for researchers to analyse the material makeup of alien planetary systems. The Hubble images, now available for download, are expected to aid future papers as scientists continue to unravel the story of this ancient cosmic traveller.
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