I didn't even realize that we've never seen the sun's poles before as I just assumed we already scanned our star many times over.
A nice reminder of how patchy and limited our knowledge is despite the impression of the opposite.
Keep up the great work, humans!
lostlogin 21 hours ago [-]
‘World First’ is a poor choice of words. ‘First Ever’?
lionkor 17 hours ago [-]
It's our world's first -- maybe the others already got it.
Or better, "humanity's first".
bravesoul2 16 hours ago [-]
Happened outside our world though!
riffraff 21 hours ago [-]
well, they are the first time they're seen on this world so I think it's fine.
throwaway81523 21 hours ago [-]
There was a previous mission (Ulysses aka International Solar Polar mission) that sent back a lot of data but for whatever reason, they didn't have it send visual images. Big bright ball = no surprise, maybe.
superkuh 1 days ago [-]
This slightly tilted view of the poles is a teaser. I didn't know they'd managed to incorporate late in the mission gravity assists into the cheaper plan B to slightly tweak out of the ecliptic while dropping close to the sun. That's pretty cool. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Animatio...
But we could've had so much more. The original proposal A for the ESA Solar Orbiter was a highly inclined orbit relative to the ecliptic plane to truly get full polar views of the sun. But this was too expensive. So they went with the cheaper proposal B which was mostly just a spectroscopic platform. Similar to SDO AIA, except in a solar orbit (almost completely within the ecliptic plane) instead of SDO AIA's Earth based sun synchronous orbit.
You'd need to completely cancel out the rotation of the solar system, far beyond what we have the technology to do.
sandworm101 15 hours ago [-]
It does, but most of the needed dV is harvested from the planets during gravity assists. The probe is accelerated/turned several hundred or thousand m/s and in exchange the planets it passes are shifted/slowed/turned by maybe 0.00000000000000000000001 m/s. In this case, the probe largely needs to slow down, to bleed of the speed it got from being at earth's orbit, so the planets are probably being accelerated.
That is fascinating. Next bet is if Saturn's hexagon will change into another n-agon in our lifetime. Obviously we'd need a probe to check.
tickerticker 18 hours ago [-]
LOL
4 hours ago [-]
colordrops 18 hours ago [-]
I love this, seems so minor if not paying attention but it's absolutely mind blowing. Getting a view we never saw of the life giver, an object that used to be revered as a god, nearly every human alive I history has basked in it's light and heat, and the for the first time we are seeing it in full
aaron695 14 hours ago [-]
[dead]
wtcactus 8 hours ago [-]
This allegation is incorrect.
The Ulysses spacecraft had already did that in 1994-1995.
„The only exception to this is the ESA/NASA Ulysses mission (1990–2009), which flew over the Sun's poles but did not carry any imaging instruments. Solar Orbiter's observations will complement Ulysses’ by observing the poles for the first time with telescopes, in addition to a full suite of in-situ sensors, while flying much closer to the Sun. Additionally, Solar Orbiter will monitor changes at the poles throughout the solar cycle.“
A nice reminder of how patchy and limited our knowledge is despite the impression of the opposite.
Keep up the great work, humans!
Or better, "humanity's first".
But we could've had so much more. The original proposal A for the ESA Solar Orbiter was a highly inclined orbit relative to the ecliptic plane to truly get full polar views of the sun. But this was too expensive. So they went with the cheaper proposal B which was mostly just a spectroscopic platform. Similar to SDO AIA, except in a solar orbit (almost completely within the ecliptic plane) instead of SDO AIA's Earth based sun synchronous orbit.
Not sure if 33° angle in 2029 is the final "polarity" or if they'll keep tilting after that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(spacecraft)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn%27s_hexagon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter%27s_South_Pole
The Ulysses spacecraft had already did that in 1994-1995.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(spacecraft)
„The only exception to this is the ESA/NASA Ulysses mission (1990–2009), which flew over the Sun's poles but did not carry any imaging instruments. Solar Orbiter's observations will complement Ulysses’ by observing the poles for the first time with telescopes, in addition to a full suite of in-situ sensors, while flying much closer to the Sun. Additionally, Solar Orbiter will monitor changes at the poles throughout the solar cycle.“