NASA mission to the Sun / Image
1st image from inside sun’s atmosphere
Paul Scott Anderson in SPACE | December 18, 2018
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now swept within the sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere.. No other spacecraft has ever come this close to the sun’s surface! And, it’s going to get closer.
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Parker Solar Probe acquired this image – 1st-ever photo taken from inside the sun’s outer atmosphere,
or corona – on December 8, 2018. The bright streak is a coronal streamer. The bright object near the center
is the sun’s innermost planet, Mercury. The dark spots are a result of background correction.
Image via NASA/Naval Research Laboratory/Parker Solar Probe.
We’ve all seen stunning images of the sun, both from the ground and from telescopes in space. The sun is a magnificent, hot, glowing ball of gas with its enormous solar prominences of hot plasma – much larger than Earth – arcing out into the surrounding blackness. Up to now, all photos of the sun have been taken from a great distant from the sun itself, given the sun’s extreme heat.
But now, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has gone where no spacecraft has gone before, flying much closer to the sun’s surface than any other probe. It has just sent back the first photos ever from inside the sun’s atmosphere. NASA released the photos on December 12, 2018.
Parker Solar Probe acquired the image above – the first photo from inside the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, the part of the sun we see in photos of total solar eclipses – when the craft was only 16.9 million miles (27.2 million km) from the sun’s surface. That sounds like a long distance. Consider that Earth itself is 93 million miles (150 million km) – and the innermost planet Mercury is about 36 million miles (58 million km) – from the sun. The Parker Solar Probe has now come within the sun’s corona or outer atmosphere. Space scientists presented the image during the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington D.C.
In the image above, the bright streaks coming from the left are jets of material called coronal streamers – also known as helmet streamers – emanating from the sun itself, which is just out of view. They are huge, extending above most other solar prominences, and can be seen during solar eclipses.
And all those spots? The bright one is Mercury in the distance, while the dark ones are just imaging artifacts from the background correction processing of the image.
