As NASA engineers finalize the calibration of the PUNCH mission‘s instruments, its four satellites have already sent back unique photos. This is how they obtained the first ever “rainbow” image of the solar corona. This groundbreaking mission should visualize how the solar wind transforms from a glowing corona to a stream of particles filling the solar system.
PUNCH is the first project to investigate the corona and solar wind in three dimensions through light polarization analysis. When corona particles scatter the sun’s rays, they leave a polarization “fingerprint” on them. The mission’s color-encoding system converts these signals into bright spectral images, revealing previously unseen details of the streams.
“These rainbow images are just a foreshadowing. PUNCH will show how the corona “lives” in real time, not in static images,” explains project leader Craig DeForest.
Four instruments form the basis of the mission:
- NFI is a narrow-angle coronagraph that dims the blinding sunlight for detailed corona photography.
- WFI is three wide-angle cameras that capture the faint light of the outer corona and solar wind from up to 45 million kilometers away.
The first test photos confirmed: all systems operate perfectly. The images already show the structure of the fluxes, which after months of calibration will become the basis for 3D maps of the heliosphere.
Over the coming months, the team will be carefully adjusting the satellites: removing noise from cosmic radiation, synchronizing data from all four instruments, and preparing the system for large-scale monitoring of the flares that shape space weather. The data will help predict solar storms that disable satellites and power grids, as well as unlock the mysteries of heating the corona to millions of degrees.
Earlier we explained why the solar corona was so hot.
According to Phys
