The Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) camera from ESA and NASA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft captured 3 planets from the Solar System in the foreground: Venus, Earth and Mars, and you won’t be able to believe how they look together in space. It is without a doubt one of the best photographs of our Solar System.
This recording was made on November 18, 2020. The stars are visible in the background, which appear to move in the Solar Orbiter recording as the spacecraft travels around the Sun. The planets also move slightly in the SoloHI field of view, but their apparent motions are different due to their individual orbital motions around the Sun.
Venus is the brightest object in the video, approximately 48 million kilometers from Solar Orbiter. The distance to Earth was 251 million kilometers and 332 million kilometers to Mars that day. The Sun is on the right, outside the image, ESA reports.
At the time of recording, Solar Orbiter was on its way to Venus for its first gravity-assisted overflight, which occurred on December 27th. The overflights of Venus (left), Earth (center) and Mars (right), will bring 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 the solar wind, taking images of our star from closer than any previous spacecraft. During its initial cruising phase, which lasts until November 2021, Solar Orbiter is already constantly acquiring data with its four instruments in situ. These instruments measure conditions around the spacecraft itself.
SoloHI is one of six remote sensing instruments aboard the mission. During the cruise phase, they are still calibrated for specific periods, but otherwise turn off. SoloHI takes images of solar wind, the stream of charged particles that the Sun constantly releases into outer space, capturing light scattered by electrons in the wind.
The solar wind, along with the powerful plasma ejections from the Sun, can cause disturbances in our space environment, a phenomenon called “space climate”, which can potentially damage astronauts, satellites in space and disrupt the terrestrial technology.
Understanding what drives the solar wind and the acceleration of solar wind particles will help us better predict periods of stormy space climate.
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