At the start of the animation, magnetic field lines coming from the Sun are smooth and orderly.
Solar Orbiter is currently around 75 million kilometres away from the Sun. This is the same distance as the spacecraft achieved during its close pass to the Sun on 15 June but nothing compared to how close it will now get, Line sun video. The processing is happening quickly too.
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When the Sun's magnetic field gets really twisted, there are lots of sunspots. These active regions often generate solar "storms": solar flares and coronal mass ejections CMEs. It will spend from 14 March to 6 April Line sun video the orbit of Mercury. The Sun is not solid.
Magnetic Field Lines Tangle as Sun Rotates
Those times are the peaks of the year sunspot cycle. Over time, the Sun's differential rotation rates cause its magnetic field to become twisted and tangled.
The Sun rotates more quickly at its equator than at its poles. For example, Line sun video, the magnetometer data is processed and cleaned within roughly 15 minutes of it Line sun video recorded. Places where "ropes" of bundled field lines "break" the surface of the Sun are active regions where sunspots form.
It is a huge sphere of plasma, so it behaves like a gigantic ball of gas. Around perihelion, the name for closest approach to the Sun, Solar Orbiter will bring high resolution telescopes closer than ever before to the Sun. On 26 March, Solar Orbiter will be less than one-third of the distance from the Sun to the Earth, and it is designed to survive this close for relatively extended periods of time, Line sun video.
Because of its position Line sun video relative proximity to Earth, Solar Orbiter has so far been able to stay in almost continual contact, beaming back large quantities of data.
The "tangles" in the magnetic field lines can produce very, very strong localized magnetic fields. Different parts of the Sun rotate at different rates.
Solar Orbiter crosses the Earth-Sun line as it heads for the Sun
This animation shows the different rate of rotation between the Line sun video equator and its poles. This will allow them to join the dots of any space weather event as it crosses the million kilometres between the Sun and the Earth.
Even if no big event takes place there is still a lot of science that can be performed in analysing the evolution of the same packet of solar wind as it travels outwards into the Solar System, Line sun video. The 15 minutes even includes the three and a half minutes that it takes for the signals to cross space between the spacecraft and the ground station.