The ecliptic is the apparent path that the Sun follows during a year. It's an imaginary line that the planets follow, with some small deviations, around the Sun. Spacecraft find it easier to follow the ecliptic because it's generally more energy efficient. However, the Solar Orbiter isn't on the ecliptic and it's giving us our first up-close looks at the Sun's poles.
The ESA's Solar Orbiter isn't the first spacecraft to see the Sun's poles. The ESA/NASA Ulysses spacecraft observed the Sun's north pole and south pole in 1994 and 1995 respectively. However, it was much further away than the Solar Orbiter. While Ulysses only came to within about 200 million km of our star, the Solar Orbiter comes within 42 million km.
Scientists are eager to get a closer look at the Sun's poles because they hold vital clues to the Sun's behaviour. Our star follows an 11-cycle called the solar magnetic activity cycle, during which its activity peaks and then subsides. During solar maximum, more sunspots appear and the Sun produces more storms. Since these storms affect Earth, sometimes powerfully, scientists want to know how the cycle works and how they can predict powerful storms. Processes on the Sun's poles likely play a huge role in its 11 year cycle.
This artist's illustration shows the Solar Orbiter observing the Sun. Image Credit: ESA
The Solar Orbiter performed a flyby of Venus in February and used the momentum to depart from the ecliptic. In March, it observed the Sun from 17 degrees off the ecliptic.
"We didn't know what exactly to expect from these first observations. The Sun’s poles are literally terra incognita," said Sami Solanki, director at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Göttingen, Germany. Solanki is also the Principal Investigator for the Solar Orbiter's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), one of the spacecraft's 10 instruments.
The Solar Orbiter's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) captured this image of the jumbled magnetic fields on the Sun's south pole. Blue indicates a positive magnetic field and red indicates negative. Image Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/PHI Team, J. Hirzberger (MPS)
As the image above shows, the Sun's magnetic fields are far more complex than Earth's. They appear to be in a state of turmoil. Outside of the poles, the Sun features many small, complex magnetic structures that vary over time. These structures occur in connection with other features like sunspots, and generate the star's large-scale magnetic field. During most of the solar cycle, the large-scale magnetic field resembles a bar magnet, with the Sun's geographic poles lined up with the magnetic poles. During the solar maximum, the Sun's magnetic poles reverse.
During the minimum activity part of its cycle, scientists think that one magnetic pole or the other dominates. During maximum, the magnetic fields should be more complex and unsettled. The Sun reached its most recent solar maximum in October 2024, meaning it's not that far removed from it now. So in terms of trying to understand the magnetic state of the poles, the Solar Orbiter observed them at the near ideal time.
“Solar Orbiter has taken up its new observation position at exactly the right time,” said MPS scientist and PHI operations scientist Johann Hirzberger. “PHI was able to map the magnetic field at the South Pole at a key moment.”
This collage shows Solar Orbiter's view of the Sun's south pole on 16–17 March 2025, from a viewing angle of around 15° below the solar equator. The data is from the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), and the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument. PHI captures the visible light sent out by iron particles (top left), revealing the Sun's surface, or photosphere. PHI also maps the Sun’s surface magnetic field along the spacecraft's line of sight (top centre). In this map, blue indicates positive magnetic field, pointing towards the spacecraft, and red indicates negative magnetic field. EUI images the Sun in ultraviolet light (top right), revealing the million-degree charged gas in the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona. The SPICE instrument (various wavelengths, bottom row) captures light coming from different layers above the Sun's surface, from the chromosphere right above the Sun's surface all the way to the Sun's corona. Image Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/PHI, EUI & SPICE Teams
The Solar Orbiter is poised to image the Sun's north and south poles more by the end of 2026. Those images will be from an angle of 17 degrees. After another flyby of Venus in December 2026, the spacecraft will get an even better look from an angle of 23 degrees. The researchers behind the Solar Orbiter are eager to watch as the Sun's polar magnetic fields restructure themselves over the coming months and years.
The Solar Orbiter was designed, built, and launched to answer four main questions. One of them concerns the solar dynamo, the process that generates the Sun's magnetic fields. These observations are critical to that question.
