Topline<\/p>\n
If you were lucky enough to witness last week\u2019s total solar eclipse, you\u2019ll have seen one of nature\u2019s rarest spectacles \u2014 the sun\u2019s wispy white corona glowing around a silhouette of the moon. It\u2019s a view that has helped transform solar science for generations, including proving Albert Einstein right<\/a>. Now scientists no longer have to wait for the moon to provide that opportunity. By flying two spacecraft in extraordinarily precise formation, the European Space Agency\u2019s Proba-3 mission is creating artificial solar eclipses lasting up to five hours at a time, offering an unprecedented view of the corona \u2014 with early results revealing new information about the solar wind.<\/p>\n The Sun\u2019s inner corona appears greenish in this image taken on 23 May 2025 by the ASPIICS coronagraph aboard Proba-3, ESA\u2019s formation-flying mission capable of creating artificial total solar eclipses in orbit. This image, captured in the visible light spectrum, shows the solar corona similarly to how a human eye would see it during an eclipse through a green filter. The hair-like structures were revealed using a specialised image processing algorithm.<\/p>\n ESA\/Proba-3\/ASPIICS\/WOW algorithmKey Facts<\/p>\n Normally, the only opportunity to study the sun\u2019s faint corona comes during a total solar eclipse, when the moon blocks the brilliant solar disk. Those events occur somewhere on Earth only about every 16 months and totality rarely lasts longer than a few minutes.<\/p>\n Launched in December 2024, Proba-3 consists of two separate spacecraft that fly in formation with extraordinary precision, maintaining their relative positions to within just a few millimeters over distances of 472 feet (144 meters. Together they function as a single giant coronagraph, with one spacecraft carrying an occulting disk that blocks the sun while the other observes the faint corona with a telescope.<\/p>\n Unlike a natural total solar eclipse, which typically lasts only a few minutes at any one location on Earth, Proba-3 can create artificial eclipses lasting up to six hours per orbit. That allows scientists to study subtle changes in the solar corona for much longer periods than during a brief natural solar eclipse.<\/p>\n In February 2026, engineers temporarily lost contact with Proba-3 following a software anomaly. After weeks of recovery efforts, the spacecraft was successfully revived, its software patched and formation flying resumed.<\/p>\n Graphic explaining the Proba-3 space mission, which will comprise two satellites flying in formation with unprecedented precision, to observe the solar corona (Graphic by Valentin RAKOVSKY and St\u00e9phane KOGUC \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n AFP via Getty ImagesThe Solar Wind And The Sun\u2019s Corona<\/p>\n The solar wind constantly streams away from the sun, carrying charged particles throughout the solar system and causing geomagnetic storms capable of disrupting satellites, radio communications, navigation systems and even electricity grids on Earth. Understanding how the solar wind forms and accelerates is one of the biggest unanswered questions in solar physics. Proba-3\u2019s main scientific target is the source of the solar wind \u2014 the solar corona, the sun\u2019s superheated outer atmosphere, which reaches temperatures of more than a million degrees Celsius. That\u2019s despite the sun\u2019s visible surface \u2014 its photosphere \u2014 being much cooler. NASA has spacecraft (SOHO\u2019s LASCO, Solar Orbiter\u2019s Metis and GOES CCOR-1<\/a>) that study the corona using occulting disks, but Proba-3 can look much closer to the sun \u2014 about 44,000 miles (70,000 kilometers) above the sun\u2019s surface, an area that has remained largely hidden from previous space telescopes. This inner corona is already giving up its secrets to Proba-3.<\/p>\n This time-lapse animation captures a coronal mass ejection (CME) in the top right, combining observations made on 16 July, 2025, over a period of one hour and a half by three different European instruments aboard different missions: the sun\u2019s disc and low corona (artificially coloured in yellow), as captured by an extreme-ultraviolet telescope (SWAP) aboard Proba-2; the outer corona (in red) observed by the LASCO C2 coronagraph aboard SOHO; and the inner corona (in green), imaged in detail by Proba-3\u2019s ASPIICS coronagraph, filling the gap.<\/p>\n ESA\/NASA\/Proba-2\/Proba-3\/SOHO\/SWAP\/ASPIICS\/LASCO C2The Solar Wind Is Faster Than Expected<\/p>\n The mission\u2019s first scientific results have already surprised researchers since its first artificial solar eclipse in orbit<\/a>. By tracking tiny blobs of plasma moving through the inner corona, scientists found that parts of the so-called slow solar wind are traveling between 250 and 500 kilometers per second \u2014 three to four times faster than previous models predicted so close to the sun. \u201cIn the inner corona, a region very difficult to observe, we saw slow solar wind gusts moving three to four times faster than expected,\u201d said<\/a> Andrei Zhukov of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, the principal investigator of Proba-3\u2019s ASPIICS instrument and the lead author of a study published<\/a> in March. Researchers also observed intricate flows, jets and streamers moving through the corona in remarkable detail.<\/p>\n Total solar eclipses have driven major scientific breakthroughs for more than a century, most famously providing one of the first observational tests of Einstein\u2019s general theory of relativity in 1919.<\/p>\n Further readingForbesYour Ultimate Guide To Stargazing And Astronomy In 2026By Jamie Carter<\/a>Forbes7 Spectacular Stargazing Events To See This SummerBy Jamie Carter<\/a>Forbes1,000 Days Until \u2018God Of Chaos\u2019 Asteroid Stuns SkywatchersBy Jamie Carter<\/a>Forbes7 Stargazing Accessories You Need This Summer \u2014 And When To Use ThemBy Jamie Carter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Topline If you were lucky enough to witness last week\u2019s total solar eclipse, you\u2019ll have seen one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[270140,270141,23707,270142,18,6145,19,17,23340,133,19342,28633,14001,17135],"class_list":["post-638740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-artificial-solar-eclipses","tag-aspiics","tag-coronagraph","tag-eclipse-mission","tag-eire","tag-esa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-proba-3","tag-science","tag-solar-corona","tag-solar-wind","tag-space-weather","tag-sun"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117099961510851873","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}