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The solar poles are relatively unexplored regions of the solar atmosphere, this is due to a lack of satellites that have travelled over and through them. In this article we briefly explore how we can use current instrumentation to generate artificial polar images, and what might be learnt from studying the solar poles.

Two partial solar eclipses were visible this summer: one on 2018 July 13 and another on 2018 August 11.

The majority of the eclipse in July took place over the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and a very small fraction above the southern Australia.

The SWAP and LYRA instruments were turned off during the morning of May 6, 2018 due to a scheduled maintenance of the PROBA2 spacecraft.

LYRA and SWAP stopped acquiring data around 23:40 UT on May 5 and resumed their normal operations around 05:50 UT on May 7, after a successful completion of all maintenance tasks. 

A partial solar eclipse was visible on 2018 February 15, in the southern part of South America, including many locations in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, as well as in Antarctica. The eclipse was visible from some areas of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as well. 

On Friday December 8, an unexpected reboot of the PROBA2 spacecraft occurred. This caused the LYRA and SWAP instruments to turn off, leading to a gap in their data flow.

The LYRA operations were restarted successfully on the next day and the instrument has been delivering measurements since 18:53 UT on December 9. 

The PROBA2 team is happy to announce the release of a new data product: the Earth atmosphere O+N₂ number density profiles. These profiles are derived from solar occultation measurements by LYRA and are available at /lyra/data/EarthAtmosphere/. They are produced daily from beginning of December till end of January and are based on the backup unit (unit 3) measurements to limit the impact of instrumental degradation.

Big news in solar physics land: the sun produced a series of strong solar flares in the past week. On September 6, 2017, an X9.3 flare occurred in NOAA AR 12673 around 12:00 UT and was preceded by many other significant flares, including an X2.2 flare around 09:00 UT. (Learn more about solar flares and their classification here.) Another strong X-class flare was observed a few days later: on September 10 the same active region produced an X8.2 flare around 16:00 UT.