Skip to main content

About EUI

Launch and Orbit

EUI was launched on board Solar Orbiter from Cape Canaveral, on 2020 February 10 05:03 CET. During its cruise phase, which lasted until November 2021, Solar Orbiter performed two gravity-assist manoeuvres around Venus and one around Earth to alter the spacecraft's trajectory, guiding it towards the innermost regions of the Solar System. and also out of the plane of the Solar System to observe the Sun from progressively higher inclinations. Further gravity-assist manoeuvres will result in the spacecraft being able to take the first ever images of the Sun's polar regions, crucial for understanding how the Sun 'works'.

More on Solar Orbiter’s Launch and Orbit.

Spacecraft

The Solar Orbiter mission is a joint science mission within the ESA Cosmic Vision Program and NASA Living with a Star Program. Solar Orbiter will study the Sun close and from high latitudes, providing the first images of the Sun's poles and investigating the heliosphere. Solar Orbiter is a three-axis stabilized spacecraft, equipped with instruments for both in-situ measurements and remote-sensing observations from a highly elliptical orbit, approaching the Sun as close as 0.29 AU.

More on the Solar Orbiter Spacecraft.

Instrument

The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) has been developed as part of the remote sensing instrument package of the Solar Orbiter mission. EUI consists of three telescopes that are optimized to image the solar atmosphere in Lyman-α (121.6 nm, temperature of roughly 30000 K) and EUV (17.4 nm and 30.4 nm, temperatures of roughly 1 MK and 0.08 MK respectively).

More on the EUI Instrument.