The image of the first light of April 14 from the Crown NFI of Punching shows the bright crown around a blocked sun, focused on fish stars. The crescent on the right are artifacts of image that will not appear once the instrument calibrated. Credit: NASA/SWRI/NRL
The Polarimeter of NASA to unify the Corona and Helososphere (Punch) mission launched on March 12, sending a constellation of four orbiting satellites with the aim of studying how the activity of the sun influences the spatial environment around the earth. This week, the four satellites opened their cameras to the sky and captured their so -called first bright images in a milestone for the mission. Successful snapshots show that the cameras are both on fire and to work as expected, allowing the mission to move forward.
Related: NASA’s fist will study how the sun affects the space that surrounds us
The parts of the fist
Punch consists of three identical satellites that each transport a large -field image (WFI) and a satellite with a crownraphic imagers with a narrow field (NFI). The wide vision of the WFI allows astronomers to study the solar wind that extends far into space beyond the sun. In the meantime, the NFI stops on the most immediate environment of the sun, erasing the light from the bright disc to imagine a region in the shape of a pasta just beyond the surface. This unique view allows astronomers to peek at the strange overheated crown of our star or external atmosphere. The four simultaneous views can be virtually combined in a final image to allow astronomers to study all the small and large phenomena simultaneously, in particular to learn how the changes in the crown affect the solar wind that flows in the whole solar system towards the earth.
Nfi first light
The NFI opened his eye to heaven first on April 14, imagining the sun against the background stars of the constellation fish. The view here has been specifically filtered to bring out those background stars, which are otherwise canceled by the brilliant zodiac light generated by the sunlight that shone with dust particles in the internal sun system. Also visible a fragment of the sun crown in the center, reminiscent of the view during an annular solar eclipse.
You may notice several strange artifacts and to the shape of a crescent on the right. These derive from a small misalignment between the imagers and the sun, allowing the light of the shit to shine from the perspective where it is not Enough blocked by the crowngraph. The engineers will use this and the subsequent images to adjust the position of the NFI on the sky to bring it in full alignment with our star and eliminate the stray light in future scientific data. In the end, this calibration will only allow one percent of the crown light through the image, providing clear views of weak structures and changes inside the crown while the sun spits the material into space.
First WFI light
Two days later, on April 16, the three WFs gave their first glance to the sun, with a large vision through the sun system. These tools are designed to look at the region of space about 45 ° from the position of the sun, roughly at the distance of the terrestrial orbit projected on the sky. Their views do not overlap, but instead form a clover model that revolves over time.
That immense visual field is evident in the image of the first WFI light, which marks the position of the sun below (intentionally off the pitch) and outlines different constellations and other objects as a reference, including the asteroid 7 Iris photographing the shot at the bottom right. The whole image is the intense glow of zodiac light.
Science soon
It is worth noting that these first images of light seem very different from the way the scientific observations of Punch will appear. Although these shots show numerous stars and the brilliant zodiac glow, scientists will remove all this background light from the final images. This is thus punching can show a clearly detailed structure inside the crown and the Sun Solar wind, which can be rather weak. Furthermore, Punch will be the first mission to show these characteristics in the polarized light, which reveals how the electric fields of the bright waves are aligned and will provide clues never seen on how the sun wind behaves and evolves over time.
The Punching commissioning phase should last 90 days, after which the four satellite group starts its two -year scientific mission.
