This solar eclipse was created by 2 satellites flying in formation, allowing astronomers to photograph the Sun’s corona.

The Occulter blocked out the Sun’s bright disk with a 1.4-meter shield, casting an 8-centimeter-wide shadow onto the Coronagraph’s optical instrument, ASPIICS, which then captured the faint ...

The coronal green line — the hottest part of the sun's inner corona — and a loop following a solar flare, in an image taken on May 23, 2025, by the ASPIICS coronagraph aboard Proba-3. | Credit ...

With its 5-centimeter aperture, ASPIICS is able to see much closer to the Sun’s surface and with greater clarity than ever before. Proba-3 Occulter eclipsing Sun for Coronagraph spacecraft.

On Monday, June 16, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that its Proba-3 mission created the world’s first artificial total solar eclipse. The mission’s two satellites, the Occulter and ...

The Occulter casts a shadow 8 centimeters (3.15 inches) across onto the Coronagraph optical instrument, ASPIICS.

The images were processed by the ASPIICS Science Operations Center at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, where a team of scientists created photos of the corona based on input from the scientific ...

From there, ASPIICS can see more details of the corona and make observations almost down to the very edge of the sun’s surface, which was previously only feasible during natural solar eclipses.

23 May 2025 by the ASPIICS coronagraph aboard Proba-3. Credit: ESA/Proba-3/ASPIICS The pair of satellites orbits the Earth in formation, 150 metres apart.