Solar systems mostly keep to themselves. What’s ours is ours and what’s not is not. Stars are simply too far from each ...

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

We're only seeing its equator, because, like every planet in the solar system, the Earth is locked into the same unchanging orbit, known as the ecliptic plane, around the star.

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 ...

Why? Because Earth, like all the planets in our solar system, orbits the sun along a line across a flat, disc-shaped plane in the sky known as the ecliptic.

Why? Because Earth, like all the planets in our solar system, orbits the sun along a line across a flat, disc-shaped plane in the sky known as the ecliptic. That means all the spacecraft we launch ...

Thanks to its newly tilted orbit around the Sun, the European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft is the first to image the Sun’s poles from outside the ecliptic plane. Solar Orbiter’s unique ...

The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter captured the first-ever images of the sun's south pole in March, which were released this week.

Now, however, scientists have tilted Solar Orbiter’s trajectory out of the ecliptic plane, allowing it to view the south pole directly.

Until now, all the views of the sun have come from the same vantage point – looking face-on toward its equator from the plane on which Earth and most of the solar system 's other planets orbit ...