The Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) camera from The Solar Orbiter spacecraft from ESA and NASA has captured three planets of the solar system in the foreground: Venus, Earth and Mars, And you won’t believe what they look like together in space. It is undoubtedly one of the best photos of our solar system.
This image was taken on November 18, 2020. The stars are visible in the background, appearing to move in the Solar Orbiter image as the spacecraft travels around the sun. The planets also move slightly in SoloHI’s field of view, but their apparent movements are different due to their individual orbital movements around the sun.
Venus is the brightest object in the video, about 30 million miles from the Solar Orbiter. The distance from Earth that day was 251 million kilometers and 332 million kilometers from Mars. The sun is on the right, out of the picture, ESA reports.
At the time of recording, the Solar Orbiter was on its way to Venus for its first gravity-assisted flyby, which occurred on December 27. The flybys of Venus (left), Earth (center), and Mars (right) will move the spacecraft closer to the sun and tilt its orbit to observe our star from different perspectives.
Solar Orbiter is the most complex scientific laboratory ever built to study the sun and solar wind, and to take closer photos of our star than any other spacecraft. During the first cruise phase, which will last until November 2021, Solar Orbiter is already constantly collecting data with its four on-site instruments. These instruments measure the conditions around the spacecraft itself.
SoloHI is one of six remote sensing instruments onboard the mission. During the cruise phase, they are still calibrating for specific time periods, but will continue to turn off. SoloHI takes pictures of the solar wind, the stream of charged particles that the sun constantly releases into space and captures the light scattered in the wind by electrons.
The solar wind, along with powerful plasma emissions from the sun, can cause disturbances in our space environment, a phenomenon called “space weather” that can potentially harm astronauts, space satellites and disrupt terrestrial technology.
If we understand what drives the solar wind and the acceleration of solar wind particles, we can better predict periods of stormy space weather.
LNB