Latest news with #PolarimetertoUnifytheCoronaandHeliosphere
Time of India
06-07-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Rainbow' in space? NASA's PUNCH mission reveals a dazzling view
NASA's newest solar research mission is already producing some amazing outcomes. The PUNCH or Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere mission, which was launched on March 12, 2025, is a set of four small satellites working together in low Earth orbit to study the sun's outer atmosphere and solar wind. Within weeks of launch, it sent back its first set of images, including a colourful and unusual 'rainbow' view of a faint glow caused by sunlight scattering off dust in space that was rare and rarely seen before. These early images are scientific and have quickly caught the attention of space enthusiasts due to their unexpected beauty. One image, taken on April 18 by the WFI-2 instrument, shows a soft gradient of red, green, and blue light against a starry sky. The image shows how the spacecraft measures different wavelengths of light and the direction that light has been polarised by particles in space. A rainbow in space This image isn't a real rainbow, but a false-colour representation of polarised light from space dust. The colours including red, green, and blue, reflect different polarisation angles that help scientists understand how light scatters off interplanetary particles. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Birla Evara 3 and 4 BHK from ₹ 1.75 Crore* Birla Estates Learn More Undo As said by NASA in a SwRI press release, 'The image is colorised to show the polarization (or angle) of the zodiacal light, a faint glow from dust orbiting the sun.' These early images help scientists confirm that the instruments are working correctly and are ready for more detailed solar observations. Seeing the moon in a new light Another exceptional moment happened on April 27, when one of PUNCH's cameras, the Narrow Field Imager (NFI), spotted the new moon passing near the sun. To see this clearly, the NFI used a special cover called an occluder to block out the sun's bright light. In the image, the moon looks full even though it was technically a new moon. That's because of something called 'Earthshine', or sunlight bouncing off Earth and lighting up the moon's dark side. This helped scientists make sure the moon won't get in the way of PUNCH's future views of the sun's outer layers. On April 16, two of the other PUNCH satellites, WFI-1 and WFI, also captured the soft glow of zodiacal light. Through their wide-angle view, they picked up some famous sights in the night sky, like the Hyades and Pleiades star clusters, the Andromeda galaxy, and the Cassiopeia constellation. These early images are helping scientists fine-tune the instruments, but they also show just how sensitive PUNCH is as it can spot even the faintest details way out in space. SPHEREx joins the ride Launched alongside PUNCH aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, SPHEREx is another NASA mission with big goals. Unlike the James Webb Space Telescope, which zooms into distant objects, SPHEREx will scan the whole sky in 102 infrared colours. As Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a SPHEREx briefing, 'We are literally mapping the entire celestial sky in 102 infrared colors for the first time in humanity's history. ' Photo: NASA/ SwRI
India Today
12-06-2025
- Science
- India Today
Video: Nasa's Punch shows huge solar eruption streaming out from the Sun
Scientists have released the first striking images from Nasa's Punch (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, which launched in March 2025 to change our understanding of the Sun's outer atmosphere and its impact on the solar PUNCH mission consists of four suitcase-sized satellites orbiting in a synchronised formation, working together as a single 'virtual instrument' to capture three-dimensional images of solar newly unveiled images reveal colossal solar eruptions, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), streaming outward from the Sun and traversing the inner solar system. In one video sequence, a CME appears as an expanding 'halo' around the Sun, dramatically illustrating the immense scale and energy of these solar storms. The PUNCH satellites' advanced wide-field imagers allow scientists to track these eruptions in unprecedented detail, following their journey from the solar corona—the Sun's outer atmosphere—into the solar wind that fills our solar system. One unique aspect of the PUNCH mission is its ability to provide a continuous, global 3D perspective, which is essential for understanding and forecasting space images also show the field of view of LASCO C3, an earlier coronagraph still used for space weather predictions, helping scientists compare new and legacy data. advertisementLate in the sequence, the impact of a CME at Earth is visible as a sudden brightening, caused by auroras and radiation effects that momentarily affect the PUNCH cameras.'These preliminary movies show that PUNCH can actually track space weather across the solar system and view the corona and solar wind as a single system,' said Dr. Craig DeForest, principal investigator for mission's data will help scientists better predict space weather events, which can disrupt communications, threaten satellites, and create spectacular auroras on PUNCH enters full operation, even more detailed and comprehensive observations are expected in the coming Reel
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA Mission Captures Eerie New View of The Moon And Sun
A new NASA mission to map the solar wind has returned some of its first images from its position in low Earth orbit. The Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission launched on 11 March 2025, and its early glimpses of the Solar System and the space beyond are both eerie and fascinating. Each of PUNCH's four satellites carries an imaging instrument – one narrow-field and three wide-field, to capture different aspects of the solar atmosphere as it transitions into the solar wind and blows through the Solar System. The aspect captured by the narrow-field imager (NFI) is perhaps the eeriest of all. This instrument is a type of coronagraph, which includes an attachment called an occulter that sits in the middle of the field of view and blocks out the Sun's disk. This allows fine details of the solar atmosphere, or corona, to be seen, in the same way details of the corona can be seen during a solar eclipse. In the image from PUNCH's NFI, the occulter is not quite fully aligned with the Sun, which means some of the Sun's light leaks through the image in interesting ways. Around the edge of the occulter, a bright ring of diffracted light can be seen, while a larger halo of light bouncing off the occulter dominates the image. Within this halo floats the new Moon, fully illuminated by the Sun's light reflecting off Earth. The visuals from the wide-field imagers (WFIs) are just as fascinating, all of them showing constellations and star clusters, with the Pleiades making an appearance in all three. From WFI-2, we get this gloriously rainbow-tinted image of the stars. Although we can't see those hues with our own eyes, they do represent something real. The spacecraft is equipped with a filter that allows it to determine how light is polarized, its waves aligned in a particular orientation. When light travels through and bounces off matter, it can become polarized. WFI-2 used its filters to detect the polarization of sunlight scattering off the interplanetary dust that orbits the Sun on the plane of the Solar System. This scattering creates a phenomenon known as zodiacal light that can be seen in dark night skies most strongly around the annual equinoxes. The hues and saturations indicate the direction and strength of the polarization of zodiacal light in WFI-2's image. The images from WFI-1 and WFI-3 are pretty similar to each other, showing zodiacal light stretching upwards, from slightly different angles. The Hyades, a V-shaped cluster of stars, and the Pleiades, a cluster resembling a scoop, can be seen at the top middle and slightly down and to the right in the WF-1 image. Meanwhile, in the WF-3 image, the Pleiades cluster appears at nine o'clock, with the constellation of Cassiopeia at the top. All four images, NASA says, provide confirmation that all the instruments are working as they should. Now, the ground team will be working on calibration, after which the true science work will commence. If we're lucky, though, even this early phase of the mission will yield some observations that help us understand how the Sun generates the wind that carves out the Solar System's bubble in the Milky Way galaxy. Mysteriously Perfect Sphere Spotted in Space by Astronomers The Most Violent Solar Storm Ever Detected Hit Earth in 12350 BCE Dark Matter Could Be Evolving, And The Implications Are Profound
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA's PUNCH spacecraft see a cosmic rainbow in the zodiacal light
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. NASA's newest spacecraft aimed at studying the sun have captured a colorful "rainbow" in the warm glow of zodiacal light observed above Earth. The PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, which launched on March 11, consists of four small satellites working in unison in low Earth orbit to provide a comprehensive view of the sun's corona, or outer atmosphere, and study the constant stream of charged particles emitted by the sun known as solar wind. The mission delivered its first set of images, including a vivid, rainbow-colored view of the sky, according to a statement from NASA that shared PUNCH's latest images. These images feature zodiacal light — the faint, diffuse glow created by sunlight scattering off dust particles in space. In one view captured by the PUNCH mission's WFI-2 instrument on April 18, a hazy glow transitions from red on the left to green in the center and blue on the right, set against a backdrop of stars. The coloration of light in this image does not depict a true optical rainbow as would be seen by the naked eye, but rather a colored representation of different wavelengths of light that highlight the instrument's capability to analyze various components of the solar atmosphere. The mission measures the corona and solar wind in three dimensions by studying the polarization of light, which is the direction light travels after it has been scattered by particles. The four satellites include one Narrow Field Imager (NFI), which blocks out the bright light from the sun to better see details in the corona. On April 27, the NFI instrument captured the new moon as it passed by the sun, using its occulter (an object that blocks a direct view of the sun) to hide the solar disk. These early images help the PUNCH mission team calibrate the instruments and ensure they are working as expected. The PUNCH spacecraft also include three Wide Field Imagers (WFIs), which are designed to see the very faint, outermost portion of the corona and solar wind. The WFI-1 and WFI-3 instruments also captured the soft glow of zodiacal light on April 16, with the Hyades and Pleiades star clusters and Andromeda galaxy in view. The Andromeda galaxy can be seen as a faint wispy spiral on the far right of the image below. The 'W' shape of the Cassiopeia constellation can be made out at the top. The familiar Pleiades can be seen at the left side of the image. RELATED STORIES: — NASA's sun-studying PUNCH mission captures its 1st-light images. Everything looks great so far — NASA set to deliver a knock-out PUNCH to mysteries of the solar wind — SpaceX rocket launches NASA SPHEREx space telescope and PUNCH solar probes (video) PUNCH launched on March 12, 2025 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Riding alongside the four PUNCH satellites was another new NASA spacecraft, called SPHEREx. Like the James Webb Space Telescope, SPHEREx — which stands for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer — peers into the cosmos with infrared eyes. Unlike the James Webb Space Telescope, however, SPHEREx is designed to take in a wide view of the universe in order to create a new map of the visible sky. "We are literally mapping the entire celestial sky in 102 infrared colors for the first time in humanity's history," Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said during a conference about SPHEREx on Jan. 31.
Digital Trends
13-05-2025
- Science
- Digital Trends
New NASA mission captures a gorgeous cosmic rainbow
A new NASA mission is already collecting data and producing striking images of the solar system. Launched in March, the PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission aims to study the sun's corona and how the sun interacts with the wider environment of the solar system. Made up of four small suitcase-sized satellites, the mission is able to capture a continuous view of the entire inner solar system thanks to a camera placed on each satellite. Before PUNCH can start doing science though, its instruments need to be brought online. As part of that process, PUNCH's Wide Field Imager 2 captured an image of the zodiacal light coming from the sun. This faint glow, often seen before sunrise and known as false dawn, is a result of sunlight being scattered by the dust which floats through the solar system. Recommended Videos In the full image below, you can see a rainbow of zodiacal light, with the position of the sun marked by a star. The image uses color to represent features of the light: the hue of the light represents its direction, and the amount of saturation represents the degree of polarization. This data also shows background stars in white, like the Pleiades star cluster above the center of the image and the Hyades star cluster, a V-shaped cluster located toward the upper left. Other instruments on board PUNCH also collected early data, including one which captured a striking view of the moon. This image was taken by the Narrow Field Imager (NFI), which is a type of instrument called a coronagraph that has a dark disk that is used to block out light from the sun. That allows less bright objects to be seen — in this case, the moon. The NFI will be used to study the sun's corona, so the purpose of this image was to check whether the moon would obscure the view — and the good news is that the moon won't interfere with the science data, as it isn't too bright compared to the background light being studied. PUNCH will now continue collecting data, with two more instruments to be commissioned within the next few weeks before full science operations begin in June.
