Closer than ever: Solar Orbiter’s first views of the Sun

The first images from ESA’s Solar Orbiter are already exceeding expectations and revealing interesting new phenomena on the Sun. This animation combines a series of views captured with several remote-sensing instruments on Solar Orbiter between 30 May and 21 June 2020, when the spacecraft was roughly halfway between the Earth and the Sun ¬– closer to the Sun than any other solar telescope has ever been before. The red and yellow images were taken with the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) in the extreme