Galileo started to ask questions about our solar system and our place in the cosmos before most people realised that there was something so vast out there it could make Earth look like a tiny speck of sand. The astronomers were responsible for the implementation of two methods needed to study the universe: observation and experimentation. His discoveries and influence set up one of the most famous disputes between science and the Catholic Church. Telescopes first turned towards the Sun in the early 1600s, and he was the one who made some of the most significant early observations.
Galileo found out before NASA: Is technology dismissible?
Galileo uncovered things about our Sun that would have never been revealed if he hadn’t tried to observe it. With current technologies, we can see further and clearer than Galileo ever could into the sun, the real reason why everything in the solar system is being held in place for the past 4.5 billion years. While it’s not breaking news, it is worth remembering that the big star bends the spacetime and for that reason the solar system is in place.
While the astronomer didn’t have half of the tools that NASA possesses today, he was still able to set the tone for the following four hundred years — until we were able to investigate regions close to the Sun that were previously impossible to study due to its blinding light. The discovery happened by accident during a flyby, but what was observed would surely have delighted Galileo.
Solar Orbiter found something: The focus was Venus
After hundreds of years of being unable to see what was really happening, NASA has now figured it out and shared the findings with the public. Back in Galileo’s day, the best anyone could do was point a telescope at the Sun and squint. Now, for the first time, scientists have a clear view of its poles — and what they are finding is full of surprises.
Thanks to a clever gravity assist from Venus during a February flyby, the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter tilted its path 17 degrees off the Sun’s equator and captured images never seen before. Those images revealed the Sun’s South Pole in staggering detail. Instruments on board — PHI, which maps magnetic fields, and EUI and SPICE, which scan the atmosphere and corona — showed how bursts of magnetic activity shoot charged particles into space, the same kind that eventually reach Earth (like these ghost particles that travelled the universe before settling here).
The challenges of studying the Sun: Its magnetic field is constantly changing
The Sun’s magnetism is no easy puzzle. Earth’s magnetic field is relatively steady, but the Sun’s is restless, constantly shifting as sunspots and polar activity reshape the entire system. Most of the time, it behaves like a giant bar magnet. But at its peak, during the solar maximum, everything flips — north becomes south, and south becomes north. With Solar Orbiter, scientists are observing this dramatic reversal unfold up close for the first time, a leap far beyond what Galileo could ever have imagined.
One blast, and we could all be done: Solar winds are no joke
SPICE, one of the spacecraft’s most powerful tools, also revealed how elements like hydrogen, oxygen, neon, and magnesium swirl through the Sun’s layers at different temperatures. By tracking the light each element emits, researchers could even measure how fast portions of solar material are moving — the seeds of the solar wind. A strong blast might disrupt satellites, GPS, and even power grids. With more than 10,000 satellites orbiting at present, even a minor flare can ripple through daily life (and one of those is built to capture the sun’s energy directly from space).