The WISPR instrument is made of two telescopes that are designed to sit
between the two antennae from the FIELDS experiment and image the solar wind and
the corona as we're flying into it so whisper is the latest instrument we've
built before but had really two requirements we wanted to be able to see
far from the spacecraft and then be able to track
the structures that are flowing out from the Sun and then as they passed the
spacecraft we would see them locally at the space path the WISPR instrument is
the only imaging instrument on the Parker Solar Probe and if is looking in the
direction that the spacecraft is traveling and what it sees is light
scattered by the dust that's in orbit about the Sun but then once we remove
that what we see is the light scattered by the electrons in the corona in the
solar wind these measurements that were making from the WISPR instrument have
been made before by other instruments from 1au from the distance of the earth
about 100 million miles from the Sun by getting closer we're increasing then the
ability to see what's really close to the Sun the fact that you're close means
that you you don't have all this this material that's in between you and the
and the object that you really interested in and that contributes to -
background noise and so you're looking at something that's much more pristine
you're looking at just that object all by itself
by going eventually 95% of the way to the Sun we are going to be able to see
what is a dust free region around the Sun that's going to be exciting part so
a probe cannot have any imager that looks at the Sun directly so the WISPR
instrument looks off of the heat shield that protects us from this very intense
heat and so we we sort of peek over the edge of it we use it as a shield to
block out the Sun itself and that allows us to see this very faint glow coming
from the corona that's only observed during the clips
for example we're creating an artificial Eclipse. Eclipses are great but from
the data point of view I like my instruments better they're working
continuously round the clock seven days a week 24 hours a day 365 days a year
sometimes for years.