Hasta La Gadget!

Scientists have taken the first-ever 360 degree shots of that big fireball in the sky, thanks to the two STEREO (that’s Solare Terrestrial Relations Observatory) probes that were launced back in 2006. The probes were lined up on opposite sides of the star, allowing scientists to stitch together a 360 degree of the sun.

The probes weren’t exactly 180 degrees apart, which is why there’s that thick black line going down the center of the image. NASA, however, promises that the two probes, “will completely close over the next several days”.

The probes traveled a combined 290 million miles to take the shots. Astronmer Phil Plait describes the process thusly,

The Moon spins once for every time it goes around the Earth, so it appears like the same face is always toward us. But the Sun rotates once about every 24.5 days. During that time, the Earth has moved 1/15th of the way around its orbit, so the Sun has to spin a little more to “catch up” with the Earth — another 1.7 days. So over the course of about a month we see the entire surface of the Sun.