Thin jets underlie the solar wind

Abstract

The Solar Orbiter spacecraft was launched in 2020 by the European Space Agency to study how solar activity drives changes in the inner part of the heliosphere, the region that extends from the Sun to the surrounding interstellar medium. The Solar Orbiter is fitted with a suite of in situ and remote-sensing instruments that allow measurement of the properties of the particles and magnetic field traversed by the spacecraft while simultaneously observing the magnetic and radiative sources at the Sun. On page 867 of this issue, Chitta et al. (1) present observations by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument that identify widespread collimated outflows (jets) at the base of the solar wind that suggest the ubiquitous small-scale dissipation of magnetic energy. The solar wind, a continuous stream of charged particles flowing outward from the Sun, is an important component of space weather that influences Earth’s magnetic environment.