A closer look at the Sun: Granules and sunspots in high-resolution images

The Solar Orbiter spacecraft has sent home the highest resolution images of the sun's surface to date, providing fresh views of our well-studied star. (Photo: Nasa)

The Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), one of six instruments onboard the spacecraft, imaged the granules on the sun's surface, which are large, turbulent cells of plasma, each spanning roughly 620 miles (1,000 kilometers). (Photo: Nasa)

"The sun's magnetic field is key to understanding the dynamic nature of our home star from the smallest to the largest scales," Daniel Müller, the ESA project scientist for Solar Orbiter, said in a statement. (Photo: Nasa)

Solar wind escapes from the sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, which was also imaged last March by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument onboard Solar Orbiter. (Photo: Nasa)

Solar Orbiter is currently about 75 million miles (120 million km) from the sun, just beyond the orbit of Venus, according to a spacecraft tracker run by ESA. (Photo: Nasa)

The spacecraft, in collaboration with Nasa's Parker Solar Probe, recently offered fresh clues to a long-standing mystery about how the solar wind heats up and accelerates to incredible speeds in space. (Photo: Nasa)

Wisps of plasma protrude out of the sun along these lines, often connecting neighboring sunspots. These loops of plasma are routinely ejected into space, forming charged-up solar wind that can trigger glowing aurora displays on Earth, Mars and other planets. (Photo: Nasa)