(Web Desk) - The first ever images of the sun's south pole have been snapped by satellite launched by the European Space Agency (ESA).

Until now, every image of the sun has been taken from straight on, along the 'elliptical plane' - the flat disk on which all planets orbit.

But by tilting its orbit to 17 degrees below the equator, the ESA's solar orbiter has managed to reveal a side of our home star that has never been seen before.

Soon, the probe will tilt its orbit lower for an even better view - meaning the best images are yet to come.

By meeting up with Venus once every few orbits, the orbiter can use the planet's gravity to shift and tilt its orbit.

This has already allowed the probe to make some exciting new discoveries about the sun, and the researchers behind the project say that revelations are on the way.

Dr Hamish Reid, an astronomer at UCL and UK co-investigator on the orbiter's Extreme Ultraviolet Imager, told MailOnline: 'This moment is very significant; we have been waiting decades since we first started observing the Sun to catch a glimpse of the poles.

'This really is the missing piece of the puzzle in our understanding of the solar magnetic field.'

Solar Orbiter used three instruments to capture images of the sun's hidden south pole, each looking at the sun in a different way.

The Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) was used to study the sun in visible light and map the surface magnetic field.

The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) captures ultraviolet light to reveal million-degree charged gas in the Sun's outer atmosphere.

Meanwhile the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument reveals the layers of the sun's atmosphere by capturing light from different temperatures of charged gas.

Dr Sami Solanki, of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, says: 'We didn't know what exactly to expect from these first observations – the Sun's poles are literally terra incognita.'

Already, these observations are helping scientists understand how the sun's ever-changing weather could impact Earth.

The sun's magnetic poles flip roughly once every 11 years in a process known as the solar cycle.
This flip coincides with a period of massively increased activity known as the solar maximum, sending huge solar flares and waves of ejected material hurtling towards Earth.

While these events can have serious consequences for our planet's electronics and communications systems, we don't know enough about the sun's magnetic poles to predict exactly when a solar maximum will occur.

Professor Lucie Green, an astronomer at UCL and co-investigator on the EUI, says: 'Being able to observe the poles is vital for understanding how the Sun's magnetic field operates on a global scale, leading to an 11-year cycle in the Sun's activity.'

One of the Solar Orbiters' first observations is that the magnetic fields at the sun's south pole are currently in a state of disarray.

A normal bar magnet will have a clear north and south pole, but the sun's south pole currently has both north and south magnetic fields present.

This only happens for a short time during the solar maximum right after the magnetic poles flip.

After the flip, the polarity will slowly build up over the next five years to create clear north and south poles, bringing the sun to its most stable period known as a solar minimum.

Scientists still don't fully understand how this build-up process happens, but the Solar Orbiters' new position should help them find out.

Professor Green says: 'We'll see previously unobserved high-latitude flows that carry magnetic elements to the polar regions, and in doing so sow the fundamental seeds for the next solar cycle.'