The Closest Images Ever Taken of the Sun’s Atmosphere

Released Thursday, July 10, 2025

ID: 14865

On its record-breaking pass by the Sun in December 2024, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe captured stunning new images from within the Sun’s atmosphere. These newly released images — taken closer to the Sun than we’ve ever been before — are helping scientists better understand the Sun’s influence across the solar system, including events that can affect Earth.

Parker Solar Probe started its closest approach to the Sun on Dec. 24, 2024, flying just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface. As it skimmed through the Sun’s outer atmosphere, called the corona, in the days around the perihelion, it collected data with an array of scientific instruments, including the Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe, or WISPR.

Learn more - https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/nasas-parker-solar-probe-snaps-closest-ever-images-to-sun/

Find the latest WISPR imagery here.

Produced Video

Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.

Music credits: “Up There” by Alexandre Prodhomme [SACEM]; “Temporal Shift” by Alessandro Rizzo [PRS] and Elliot Greenway Ireland; “Micro Life” by Peter Larsen [PRS]; “Hope and Relief” by Eddy Pradelles [SACEM] from Universal Production Music

Complete transcript available.

WISPR Data

This video, made from images taken by Parker Solar Probe’s WISPR instrument during its record-breaking flyby of the Sun on Dec. 25, 2024, shows the solar wind racing out from the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Lab