Latest news with #WFI-2
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
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
