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Scientists unveil breathtaking 100 mile per pixel photograph of the Sun

The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter has snapped detailed photographs of the Sun that have been stitched together to create an eye-watering image.

Scientists unveil breathtaking 100 mile per pixel photograph of the Sun
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Junior Editor
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TL;DR: The Solar Orbiter, launched by the European Space Agency in February 2020, is on a mission to study the Sun. It recently captured a high-resolution image by stitching together twenty-five images taken from 72 million km away.

The Solar Orbiter is on a journey toward the Sun, and last year, in March, it reached the halfway point where it snapped twenty-five images of our local star, which have now been stitched together to form an insanely high-resolution image of the Sun.

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For those that don't know, the Sun is preposterously large compared to Earth, with its diameter measuring 1.39 million km across (863,705 miles), compared to Earth's diameter of 12,769 kilometers (7,926 miles). Given its massive size, the Sun is responsible for 99% of the mass in the Solar System while also being the anchor point that all objects in the Solar System orbit due to its intense gravitational pull. The Sun has been doing this for the past 4.6 billion years, and while it can be violent and unpredictable at times with its constant outbursts of charged particles, without it, we wouldn't have life on Earth. Check out the image here.

Despite its necessity, we still don't know everything about the Sun, which is why the European Space Agency (ESA) has sent the Solar Orbiter on a journey to investigate it, with the space probe tasked to capture high-resolution images of our local star as it progresses. The Solar Orbiter was launched in February 2020 and is equipped with high-resolution imaging equipment, along with instruments to measure the Sun's magnetic fields and solar wind. The Solar Orbiter will come within 42 million km (26,097,590 miles).

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As for the image, the Solar Orbiter snapped twenty-five images of the Sun, and according to a report from UniverseToday, the images were taken at a distance of 72 million km (44,738,726 miles), and each pixel on the final mosaic image is around 175 km (108.74 miles) per pixel.

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Junior Editor

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Jak joined the TweakTown team in 2017 and has since reviewed 100s of new tech products and kept us informed daily on the latest science, space, and artificial intelligence news. Jak's love for science, space, and technology, and, more specifically, PC gaming, began at 10 years old. It was the day his dad showed him how to play Age of Empires on an old Compaq PC. Ever since that day, Jak fell in love with games and the progression of the technology industry in all its forms.

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