A new filter will let smart people from CSIRO do something usually considered pretty dumb – staring directly into the sun for science.

An Australian team has designed and built part of the optical array for the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter satellite, to be launched in 2017.

The exciting device will let scientists see the sun with unprecedented clarity, capturing the most detailed pictures of its gaseous surface ever taken.

The Solar Orbiter will travel closer to the Sun than any previous spacecraft on its mission to provide detailed views of the star’s Polar Regions and inner heliosphere – its uncharted innermost region.

The development was a massive challenge for the Australian research body, but it also could not have been undertaken anywhere else in the world.

CSIRO optics research leader Dr David Farrant says the optical filters were designed to be extremely accurate, allowing the satellite’s instrumentation to take measurements centred to within 1/30th of a nanometre; a width that makes a human hair look like the trunk of a Norfolk pine.

“Having manufactured several of these filters over the past two years, we have just shipped the final one off to the Max Planck Institute where it will be assembled and tested with the rest of the satellite’s sophisticated equipment,” Dr Farrant said.

“Our optics lab is the only place in the world where filters of this kind can be made to such precise specifications. Even then we had to develop a series of new techniques, precision lasers and even a new testing chamber, just to make this work.

“The filters have to be extremely robust to survive the Orbiter’s 10 year mission in space. We had to design them to withstand the forceful vibration of the spacecraft’s launch as well as the ongoing intense heat and high energy radiation from the sun.”

“We’ve developed high precision optics for some of the world’s most sophisticated observatories, but this will be the first time we actually send our research out into the solar system. It’s a tremendous achievement,” he said.

With the unprecedented detail provided by the filters, researchers will gain new insight into sunspot activity, which helps in the prediction of solar winds and geomagnetic storms.

The information gathered will eventually improve the accuracy of climate models on Earth, providing significant scientific, social and economic benefits.