ESA’s Solar Orbiter captures unreal images of four planets at the same time

We are truly living on the dawn of a remarkable new era of space exploration, with SpaceX rockets rumbling almost every month and international probes spread around the Milky Way capturing marvelous images of asteroids, comets, planets. , moons and our own shining Sun.

With all the activity and media coverage of these spacecraft and probes, it’s easy to become complacent or apathetic to the data and photos their missions bring back to Earth. So let’s stop for a moment and gaze at the skies in these dazzling new photos of NASA / ESA’s Solar Orbiter as it traverses our solar system studying our home star.

The new video footage below, pieced together with a series of photos, shows incredibly rare cosmic paintings of Earth, Mars, and Venus, with the dim light of Uranus flashing us from the afterlife as well.

These inspiring images were obtained on November 18, 2020 by the SoloHI camera installed on board Solar Orbiter. Venus (left), Earth (middle) and Mars (right) are clearly visible in the foreground, with a tapestry of glowing stars in the background, all captured as the spacecraft loops around the Sun . Eagle-eyed astronomers also noted that Uranus shares the stage near the lower edge.

“Solar Orbiter is the most complex science lab ever built to study the Sun and the solar wind, taking images of our star closer than any other spacecraft before,” the ESA researchers noted. “The Solar Orbiter heliospheric imager (SoloHI) is one of six remote sensing instruments on board the mission. During the cruising phase, these are still being calibrated for specific periods, but are deactivated otherwise. “

Venus, Earth and Mars move slightly within the field of view of the SoloHI instrument. Venus is the brightest object seen, hovering about 30 million kilometers from the solar orbiter. When the photos were taken that day, the distance to Earth was 156 million miles and 206 million miles from Mars. Away from Uranus is a single dot next to the official timecode.

“At the time of recording, Solar Orbiter was en route to Venus for its first gravity-assisted flyby, which took place on December 27,” ESA scientists explained. “Flying over Venus and Earth will bring the spacecraft closer to the Sun and tilt its orbit in order to observe our star from different angles.”