All pre-existing images of the sun were taken from within about 7 degrees of its equator. That’s because every spacecraft orbiting the star, along with every planet in our solar system, swoops around the sun in a flat disk called the ecliptic plane, which is tilted just 7.25 degrees relative to the sun’s equatorial plane. (The Ulysses spacecraft is the only one to have passed over the sun’s poles, but it didn’t have a camera.)
Hold up, the Ulysses probe didn’t take any pictures of the Sun’s poles? Or did it not carry a camera?
It did not: