Parker Solar Probe: The Origins of Switchbacks

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    ID: 14055 Produced Video

    Parker Solar Probe's WISPR Images Inside The Sun's Atmosphere

    Dec. 20th, 2021
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere – the corona – and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. As Parker Solar Probe flew through the corona, its WISPR instrument captured images.The Wide-Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) is the only imaging instrument aboard the spacecraft. WISPR looks at the large-scale structure of the corona and solar wind before the spacecraft flies through it. About the size of a shoebox, WISPR takes images from afar of structures like coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, jets and other ejecta from the Sun. These structures travel out from the Sun and eventually overtake the spacecraft, where the spacecraft’s other instruments take in-situ measurements. WISPR helps link what’s happening in the large-scale coronal structure to the detailed physical measurements being captured directly in the near-Sun environment.To image the solar atmosphere, WISPR uses the heat shield to block most of the Sun’s light, which would otherwise obscure the much fainter corona. Specially designed baffles and occulters reflect and absorb the residual stray light that has been reflected or diffracted off the edge of the heat shield or other parts of the spacecraft.WISPR uses two cameras with radiation-hardened Active Pixel Sensor CMOS detectors. These detectors are used in place of traditional CCDs because they are lighter and use less power. They are also less susceptible to effects of radiation damage from cosmic rays and other high-energy particles, which are a big concern close to the Sun. The camera’s lenses are made of a radiation hard BK7, a common type of glass used for space telescopes, which is also sufficiently hardened against the impacts of dust.WISPR was designed and developed by the Solar and Heliophysics Physics Branch at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. (principal investigator Russell Howard), which will also develop the observing program. ||

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  • 
    ID: 4958 Visualization

    Parker Solar Probe: Crossing the Alfven Surface

    Dec. 14th, 2021
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    Split window view illustrating the orbit of Parker with the orbit trail colored based on the Mach number of the solar wind and the magnetic field lines (represented as gold) connecting back to the Sun. The Mach number drops below unity (one) when a field line transitions between two different coronal hole regions (the blue and red regions marked on the Sun). || The Sun's corona extends far beyond the solar surface, or photosphere and is considered the outer boundary of the Sun. It marks the transition to the solar wind which moves through the solar system. This limit is defined by the distance at which disturbances in the solar wind cannot propagate back to the solar surface. Those disturbances cannot propagate back towards the Sun if the outbound solar wind speed exceeds Mach one, the speed of 'sound' as defined for the solar wind. This distance forms an irregular 'surface' around the Sun called the Alfvén surface.Parker Solar Probe has now reached close enough to the Sun that it has begun to penetrate this Alfvén surface. From measurements of the solar wind plasma environment by the Parker's FIELDS and SWEAP instruments, scientists can compute the 'speed of sound' for the plasma, which exhibits brief periods when the Mach number drops below unity (one).At Parker's distance during encounter 8, the Mach number dropped below unity on several occasions. Propagating the magnetic field vector at Parker back to the solar photosphere revealed that these regions corresponded to significant changes in the magnetic field on the photosphere, particularly that fields lines of 'open' magnetic flux were transitioning from one location to another.In the visualizations below, we see the measured Mach number at Parker propagated along the orbit, with green representing Mach number greater than one, grey represents Mach number approximately one, and red represents Mach number less than one. When we trace the field lines at these moments back to the Sun, we see the field line jumping between isolated regions of 'open' magnetic flux - blue for inward magnetic flux and red for outbound magnetic flux. ||

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  • 
    ID: 14035 Produced Video

    AGU 2021 - Major discoveries as NASA’s Parker Solar Probe closes in on the Sun

    Dec. 14th, 2021
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now done what no spacecraft has done before—it has officially touched the Sun. Launched in 2018 to study the Sun’s biggest mysteries, the spacecraft has now grazed the edge of the solar atmosphere and gathered new close-up observations of our star. This is allowing us to see the Sun as never before—including the findings in two new papers, which were presented at AGU, that are helping scientists answer fundamental questions about the Sun.PANELISTSDr. Nicola Fox• Heliophysics Division Director of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA HeadquartersDr. Nour Raouafi• Project Scientist for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe• The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory Dr. Justin Kasper• Principal Investigator for Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP) Investigation on Parker Solar Probe • BWX Technologies, Inc., University of MichiganProf. Stuart D. Bale• Principal Investigator for Fields Experiment (FIELDS) on Parker Solar Probe • University of California, Berkeley Dr. Kelly Korreck• Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters• Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory ||

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  • 
    ID: 14036 Produced Video

    Animation: NASA's Parker Solar Probe Enters Solar Atmosphere

    Dec. 14th, 2021
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere – the corona – and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. The new milestone marks one major step for Parker Solar Probe and one giant leap for solar science. Just as landing on the Moon allowed scientists to understand how it was formed, touching the very stuff the Sun is made of will help scientists uncover critical information about our closest star and its influence on the solar system. On April 28, 2021, during its eighth flyby of the Sun, Parker Solar Probe encountered the specific magnetic and particle conditions at 18.8 solar radii (8.127 million miles) above the solar surface that told scientists it had crossed the Alfvén critical surface for the first time and finally entered the solar atmosphere.More information here. ||

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  • 
    ID: 20354 Animation

    Animation: Origins of Switchbacks

    Dec. 14th, 2021
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    On recent solar encounters, Parker Solar Probe collected data pinpointing the origin of zig-zag-shaped structures in the solar wind, called switchbacks. The data showed one spot switchbacks originate is at the visible surface of the Sun – the photosphere. By the time it reaches Earth, 93 million miles away, the solar wind is an unrelenting headwind of particles and magnetic fields. But as it escapes the Sun, the solar wind is structured and patchy. In the mid-1990s, the NASA-European Space Agency mission Ulysses flew over the Sun’s poles and discovered a handful of bizarre S-shaped kinks in the solar wind’s magnetic field lines, which detoured charged particles on a zig-zag path as they escaped the Sun. For decades, scientists thought these occasional switchbacks were oddities confined to the Sun’s polar regions. In 2019, at 34 solar radii from the Sun, Parker Solar Probe discovered that switchbacks were not rare, but common in the solar wind. This renewed interest in the features raised new questions: Where are they coming from and how do they form and evolve? Were they forged at the surface of the Sun, or shaped by some process kinking magnetic fields in the solar atmosphere? The new findings, in press at the Astrophysical Journal, finally confirm one origin point near the solar surface. More information here. ||

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    ID: 14045 Produced Video

    NASA's Parker Solar Probe Touches The Sun For The First Time

    Dec. 14th, 2021
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere – the corona – and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. The new milestone marks one major step for Parker Solar Probe and one giant leap for solar science. Just as landing on the Moon allowed scientists to understand how it was formed, touching the very stuff the Sun is made of will help scientists uncover critical information about our closest star and its influence on the solar system. More information here. ||

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