Science & Environment
Sun’s South Pole Filmed by Spacecraft: First-Ever Images from Solar Orbiter
- ESA and NASA’s Solar Orbiter have captured the first-ever images and video of the Sun’s south pole, revealing swirling plasma and complex magnetic fields.
- The breakthrough offers critical insights into the Sun’s magnetic cycle and could improve space weather prediction, affecting Earth’s technology systems.
The Sun’s south polar region as imaged by ESA’s Solar Orbiter in March 2025. Thanks to a tilt in its orbit (about 15�17° out of the ecliptic), the spacecraft finally had a direct view of the south pole. For the first time in history, scientists have photographed one of the Sun’s elusive poles. In mid-March 2025, the European Space Agency (ESA) and ’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft returned the first-ever video and images of the Sun’s south pole. Researchers hailed the images as an unprecedented breakthrough: as one ESA statement put it, Solar Orbiter “has delivered humanity’s first video and images of the Sun’s south pole�.
The new views reveal a swirling, superheated atmosphere at the pole, glowing at around one million degrees Celsius, above cooler gas pockets still only ~100,000°C. These vivid visuals show charged plasma loops and filaments unlike anything seen from Earth. ESA Director of Science Prof. Carole Mundell described the moment: “Today we reveal humankind’s first-ever views of the Sun’s pole,� she said. “The Sun is both our life source and a potential disruptor of modern systems—understanding it is essential.”� In short, the Sun’s south pole has now been filmed by spacecraft for the first time, providing scientists with the missing piece of the solar puzzle.
How Solar Orbiter Captured the Pole
Earth and most spacecraft orbit in the Sun’s equatorial plane, so polar regions were hidden from view. Solar Orbiter changed that. After launch in February 2020, the probe made careful planetary flybys, especially of Venus, that tilted its orbit out of the solar ecliptic plane. By March 2025, it was viewing the Sun from 17° below the equator. This was enough to directly see the Sun’s south pole for the first time. ESA’s observations were made during Solar Orbiter’s first high-latitude campaign on 16�17 March 2025. Three of its remote-sensing cameras took the shots: the Polarimetric Helioseismic Imager (PHI), the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), and the SPICE spectrograph. These instruments each probe different layers and wavelengths of the solar atmosphere, so together they form a composite, multi-colour picture of the polar region.
Until now, no spacecraft had ever imaged the Sun’s poles. (NASA/ESA’s earlier Ulysses mission flew over the poles in the 1990s�2000s but carried no cameras.) Solar Orbiter is truly the first to do so. A data release from ESA confirmed that “spacecraft (and ground telescopes) have never been able to see the Sun’s poles� because none reached more than a 7° tilt. The breakthrough came only when Solar Orbiter’s orbit reached high latitudes. Now, for the first time, we can compare a polar view (as at March 2025) with the familiar equatorial view from Earth.
What the Images Show
The south pole images reveal complex, dynamic behaviour. ESA reports that the corona above the pole is “swirling� with charged gas loops, rather than a simple uniform surface. Bright emissions seen by EUI outline million-degree coronal plasma (as expected), but darker lanes and patches mark cooler or void regions near 100,000°C. Measurements of the magnetic field (from PHI) show a mix of polarities at the pole, indicating a “messy� magnetism during the solar activity maximum. One early finding is that both north- and south-polarity field patches co-exist at the south pole, rather than one dominant polarity. This is exactly what models predict at solar maximum, as remnant magnetic flux from sunspots is transported poleward.
The SPICE spectrograph added further insight. It measured emissions from elements such as hydrogen, oxygen and neon at different temperatures, effectively taking solar “wind snapshots� from the pole. By tracking Doppler shifts in these spectral lines, the team could determine how fast plasma was moving away from the surface. The data show poleward flows that were previously unobservable: as one scientist put it, “We can finally observe the flows that carry magnetic fields to the poles.� In other words, the images are not just pretty pictures � they reveal the physics of how polar magnetic fields are maintained and how the solar wind is seeded.
Scientific Significance
These first pole images have an immediate impact. The Sun’s poles are key to its 11-year activity cycle. The global magnetic field flips polarity at each cycle maximum, and all modellers need polar data to understand this process. According to ESA, the new observations are “key to understanding the Sun’s magnetic field and why it flips roughly every 11 years�. In the current cycle (Solar Cycle 25), the Sun is near its peak activity, so seeing the chaotic mixed-polarity field at the south pole right now provides a rare glimpse of the flip process in action. Solar Orbiter may continue to watch how the pole reorganises as the field reversal completes.
Understanding the poles also improves space weather forecasts. Solar storms (flares and coronal mass ejections) are driven by magnetic activity, and their particles and radiation stream out along open field lines near the poles. The new polar imagery feeds models of how and where these fields extend into space. In practice, better models could help predict when streams of charged particles will rain down on Earth, affecting satellites, power grids and communications. As Prof. Christopher Owen (a solar physicist) noted, “Solar Orbiter is bringing us closer to the Holy Grail of solar physics � predicting space weather.� In short, by finally “filming� the Sun’s pole, Solar Orbiter has filled a critical observational gap.
Looking ahead, even sharper views are coming. Solar Orbiter will continue to increase its orbital tilt (targeting ~33° by the end of the mission), letting it image the poles more head-on. Future passes will yield more frames of the north pole and south pole under different conditions. Scientists will comb through this solar dataset for months, comparing it with other solar probes like the Parker Solar Probe and with ground observatories. For now, the takeaway is clear: for the first time, humankind has filmed the Sun’s south pole. This landmark achievement by the Solar Orbiter mission opens a new chapter in solar physics, offering a view of our star that was hidden just a few weeks ago.
