Sun’s Hidden Face: Humanity Views the Bottom of the Sun for the First Time
The Sun's poles have long been a cosmic mystery buried from Earth's perspective by the simple fact that our planet, along with every other spacecraft, orbits within the equatorial plane. Thanks to the European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter spacecraft, however, mankind has now seen the solar south pole in history. Captured in March 2025, the ground-breaking images expose a turbulent magnetic scene and provide hitherto unheard-of understanding of the Sun's enigmatic 11-year cycle.
These revelations could not have come at a more pivotal moment. Right now, the Sun is in its most volatile phase solar maximum when geomagnetic storms, flares, and coronal mass ejections assault the solar system. Furthermore, scientists are finding that the Sun's poles are far more unusual than expected as Solar Orbiter probes hitherto unexplored ground.
A View Never Seen Before: Breaking Free From the Ecliptic Plane
Up until now, every picture of the Sun has come from close proximity to its equator. That's so because Earth and all other spacecraft orbit in the ecliptic plane, a flat disc matched with the Sun's middle. Even the fabled Ulysses probe, which passed over the poles in the 1990s, lacked cameras, so leaving the polar areas dark.
But Solar Orbiter changed the rules. A gravity assist from Venus tilted its orbit by 17 degrees in February 2025, enabling it to first directly view the south pole of the Sun. Released in June, the resultant pictures depict a whirlpool of turbulent atmosphere where temperatures soar to a million degrees Celsius far hotter than the surface of the Sun.
Magnetic Chaos: The Sun’s Poles Are a Mess
The condition of the Sun’s magnetic field is one of the most surprising discoveries. Typically, magnets have a north and south pole. However, the south pole of the Sun's magnetic field shown by PHI resembles a broken compass that is spinning confusedly with both north and south polarities mixed together.
It is marked by a magnetic frenzy during solar maximum, the southern peak of the Sun’s 11-year cycle which includes the flipping of its magnetic field. PHI expects that over the next five years, the field will stabilize at one dominant polarity at each pole. For now, however, the south pole of the Sun is a storm of conflicting forces, which was predicted but had never been directly observed.
Tracking the Solar Wind’s Birthplace
Beyond magnetism, the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument of Solar Orbiter made another first: tracking solar material's speed as it surged outward. Doppler shifts the same effect causing a change in pitch of an ambulance siren. Tracking carbon ions racing across the Sun's transition zone, a superheated layer with temperatures ranging from 10,000°C to hundreds of thousands of degrees, SPICE recorded.
This information is vital since it shows how the solar wind the stream of charged particles that buffet Earth accelerates into space. Knowing this process would enable one to forecast destructive space weather, which can destroy satellites, cause havoc with electrical systems, and even endanger astronauts.
