The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter spacecraft returns first-ever data of the Sun collected from a 17-degree tilted orbit.

The magnetic field drives the formation of sunspots, cooler regions on the solar surface that appear as dark blotches. At the ...

At any rate, that flat-on angle prevented us from seeing either pole. Escaping the ecliptic plane takes some doing, by which I mean a lot of very expensive rocket fuel.

Until now. In March, a spacecraft captured the first-ever clear images of the sun's south pole, which the European Space Agency released Wednesday, June 11. “We reveal humankind’s first-ever ...

Well, the pole's magnetic field, simply put, is a mess at the moment. See, the sun's magnetic field flips roughly every 11 years, and it's about to flip this year if it hasn't yet.

But thanks to a flyby around Venus in February, the Solar Orbiter has now begun to orbit the Sun outside of this “ecliptic plane,” allowing the spacecraft to see the Sun from a new, high-latitude ...

Solar Orbiter captures 1st images of sun's south pole 5 years after Florida launch The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter, which launched in 2020 from Cape Canaveral, got a historic look at the ...

The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter, in collaboration with NASA, has captured unprecedented images of the Sun's south pole from 40 million miles ...

Item 1 of 2 A radiance map of the sun’s south pole as recorded by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft is seen in this image released by the European Space Agency on June 11, 2025.

The Solar Orbiter has captured the first-ever views of the sun's south pole. ESA & NASA / Solar Orbiter / EUI Team, D. Berghmans (ROB), via ESA Standard Licence Though humans have been observing ...

Escaping the ecliptic plane takes some doing, by which I mean a lot of very expensive rocket fuel. The Solar Orbiter used Venus's gravity to help pull it out of the usual equatorial orbit around ...