The first images from a new solar mission — the closest ever taken of the sun — reveal a ubiquitous burbling of miniature solar flares. “We’ve never been closer to the sun with a camera,” Daniel Müller, the project scientist for the mission, Solar Orbiter, said during a news conference held on Thursday by the European Space Agency. “And this is just the beginning of the long epic journey of Solar Orbiter.”The miniature solar flares, which the scientists call campfires, were seen as the spacecraft made its first close approach to the sun. The campfires are about one-millionth or one-billionth the size of flares that have been observed from Earth. The sun is currently in the quiet part of its 11-year-solar cycle, and the surface looks placid.

Source: New York Times July 16, 2020 12:15 UTC