NASA has released a photo of the nearest sun, taken by Parker solar probes just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) from the star’s surface. The new image reveals important features of solar winds that help scientists understand the origins of this mysterious spatial meteorological phenomenon and its impact on life on Earth.
Solar wind is a constant flow of charged particles (mainly protons and electrons) emitted by the outer atmosphere of the sun, known as corona. This rapid of material runs through the solar system over a million miles from the Sun, combining it with magnetic fields and materials abandoned from the Sun to strip the aurora, planetary atmosphere, and generates currents that interfere with Earth’s power networks. Understanding and predicting the weather in this space is essential to protect astronauts and spacecraft and minimizing infrastructure disruption caused by strong solar activity.
The Parker Solar Probe, released in 2018, was the first spaceship to enter the Sun Coronavirus. Equipped with a wide field imager for the Solar Probe (WISPR) and a series of scientific instruments including the Solar Wind Electronic Alpha and Proton (SWEAP), the brave heat and intense radiation of an unmanned ship, providing researchers on Earth with detailed data on the Sun and its close environment.
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On the record-breaking flyby on December 24th last year, Parker Solar Probe captured an image showing how this wind works shortly after it left the coronavirus, crucially recording a collision between the unpredictable bubbles and magnetic fields of plasma called coronal mass emissions (CMEs).
“In these images, we see CMEs essentially heading upwards from each other,” said Angelos Vourilidas, WISPR instrument scientist at Johns Hopkins, applied the Institute of Physics in a press release. “We use this to see how CMES is fused together. This is important for the weather in space.”
There are two types of solar wind. Fast solar winds travel at 800 km/sec, creating relatively uniform material rapids. On the other hand, slow solar winds are more dense and unpredictable, blowing gusts rather than constant flow.
Related: The bottom of the sun is visible to humans for the first time in history (photo)
Around the Earth, we tend to experience solar winds as a more consistent wind. However, previous data from the Parker solar probe revealed that these gusts rose at close to the sun and there was additional turbulence in the form of a zigzag magnetic field called a switchback at a distance of 14.7 million miles (23.6 million km) from the surface. These switchbacks are thought to be derived from a magnetic funnel created by visible patches outside the sun, and in 2024 scientists declared that high-speed solar winds are partially driven by this phenomenon.
But the slow solar winds – their dense, more fluctuating brothers – remain more mysterious.
“The big unknowns can create solar winds and escape the immeasurable gravitational attraction of the sun?” Noor Rawafi, a project scientist at Parker Solar Probe at Johns Hopkins’ Institute of Applied Physics, said in a statement. “Understanding the continuous flow of this particle, especially the slow solar wind, is a major challenge, especially given the diversity of the properties of these streams. However, with Parker solar probes we are closer than ever to reveal their origins and their evolution.”
Previous observations suggested that there could be two potentially slow solar winds. This includes the Alfvénic and the non-Alphvenic, which have small magnetic switchbacks, but not the case. In the latest pass, the Parker solar probe was finally able to confirm this long-standing hypothesis. Additionally, new detailed photographs help scientists understand the origins of each of these distinct phenomena. The Alfvenic winds come from the coronal holes in the cooler areas of the corona, whereas the non-Alphvenic winds can be emitted from hot magnetic loops called helmet streamers. “There is no final consensus yet, but there are a lot of new and interesting data,” said Adam Sabo, a Parker Solar Probe Mission Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.
This probe continues to collect data to orbit the Sun, and is expected to pass it on September 15th, next to the nearest point to the surface of the Sun.
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