By Isaac Schultz Published March 30, 2025 | Comments (0) | The solar wind. Image: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/Metis & EUI Teams, V. Andretta and P. Romano/INAF Behold, the piping host particles of solar wind streaming from our Sun, caught in new footage from the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter. The video was captured by the orbiters Metis instrument, a coronagraph which blocks light directly from the Sun in order to see fainter phenomena in its outer atmosphere, or corona. New research describing the observations was published today in The Astrophysical Journal. In this paper, we present observations by Metis during its perihelion passage of a striking helical radial structure that extended from 1.5 to 3 [solar radii] and lasted for more than 3 hr, the team wrote. To the best of our knowledge, these observations are unique, in that they appear to show directly the long-duration outflow of Alfvnic solar wind into the heliosphere. The solar radius is 432,690 miles (696,347 kilometers), so the structure described by the team extended as far as 1,298,070 miles (2,089,041 kilometers)its a pretty large structure! The video was taken by Metis on October 12, 2022. Metis is the only instrument capable of seeing such subtle features of the solar wind, according an ESA release. The Solar Orbiter regularly catches quirks of the Suns extreme physics; just last month, the spacecraft witnessed (and recorded) tiny jets produced near the Suns South Pole.Solar wind is constantly hitting Earth, with particles sometimes kickstarting aurorae in our planets skies. But Metis unique capabilities allow researchers to study the solar wind at its source, shedding light not just on the wind but also on the Suns inner corona, which produces the particles. The current plan is to keep Solar Orbiter operationalthrough 2026, though the mission could be extended until 2030. Well almost certainly have more remarkably intimate looks into our host star before then.Daily NewsletterYou May Also Like By Passant Rabie Published March 27, 2025 By Isaac Schultz Published March 25, 2025 By Passant Rabie Published March 24, 2025 By Passant Rabie Published March 20, 2025 By Passant Rabie Published March 19, 2025 By Passant Rabie Published March 19, 2025