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ESA's Proba-3 mission, made up of twin spacecraft capable of aligning to create artificial eclipses, has captured "rare" footage of three solar prominences erupting from the sun's mysteriously hot atmosphere.
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ESA's Proba-3 mission has captured a trio of solar prominences erupting from the sun, hurling plumes of plasma through the corona.
(Image credit: ESA/Proba-3/ASPIICS, NASA/SDO/AIA)
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The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a stunning time-lapse of a trio of solar eruptions exploding into space from the sun during an "artificial eclipse." The unique footage, captured by the newly operational Proba-3 mission, could help scientists unravel one of the biggest mysteries surrounding our home star, researchers say.
The Proba-3 mission consists of two probes, dubbed the coronagraph and the occulter, which were launched into a highly elliptical orbit around Earth in December 2024. By perfectly aligning the coronograph behind the occulter, scientists can view the sun with its bright center fully obscured, just like we see from the planet's surface during a solar eclipse — but more frequently and over longer periods of time. This allows researchers to study the hidden subtleties of the sun's faint atmosphere, or corona, like never before.
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Three major plasma plumes shoot out of the sun during the video. At first glance, these look like solar flares — the massive explosions that can hurl solar storms toward Earth. However, when you look closely at the solar disk, there are no bright flashes, which are the telltale signs of a flare. Instead, what we are seeing are what researchers refer to as prominences, which are towering loops of plasma on the sun's surface that overextend and snap, flinging their ionized gas into space.
While they are less powerful than flares, prominences are equally valuable to researchers because they are usually harder to spot, Andrei Zhukov, a researcher at the Royal Observatory of Belgium and principal investigator of Proba-3's coronograph, explained in a statement. "Seeing so many prominence eruptions in such a short timeframe is rare, so I'm very happy we managed to capture them so clearly during our observation window."
The bright light emitted by the prominence eruptions suggests they are significantly hotter than the surrounding corona. But in reality, their plasma is much cooler — only "around 10,000 degrees" compared to the million-degree corona, Zhokov said.
The extremely high temperature of the corona, which is "around 200 times hotter than the sun's surface," is one of the sun's biggest remaining mysteries, Zhukov said. To date, scientists have struggled to explain why the corona is so much hotter than the rest of the sun, and footage like this could be the key to figuring it out, he added.
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Proba-3 has now observed at least 50 different artificial eclipses since beginning operations around seven months ago, and will hopefully collect hundreds more in the coming years, according to ESA. But it is not the only new technology that is making waves in the solar physics community.
For example, in June 2025, NASA's CODEX telescope, affixed to the exterior of the International Space Station, collected its first images of the sun, revealing never-before-seen perturbations in the corona linked to solar wind.
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Last year, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii and ESA's Solar Orbiter — both of which came online in 2021 — also captured the most detailed photo of the sun's surface and the first-ever image of the sun's south pole, respectively.
NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which has been repeatedly swooping closer to the sun than any spacecraft before it, has also captured some stunning photos of our home star that could help unravel multiple solar secrets.
All of these achievements have occurred while the sun was in its most active phase, or solar maximum, meaning they could provide clues to how powerful solar storms could impact our planet in the future.
Harry BakerSocial Links NavigationSenior Staff WriterHarry is a U.K.-based senior staff writer at Live Science. He studied marine biology at the University of Exeter before training to become a journalist. He covers a wide range of topics including space exploration, planetary science, space weather, climate change, animal behavior and paleontology. His recent work on the solar maximum won "best space submission" at the 2024 Aerospace Media Awards and was shortlisted in the "top scoop" category at the NCTJ Awards for Excellence in 2023. He also writes Live Science's weekly Earth from space series.
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