In late December 2024, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe made its closest-yet flyby of the sun. It passed just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface, a mere stone’s throw in solar system terms, traveling fast enough at its closest shave to get from Philadelphia to Washington DC in one second. And now, the space agency has released photos taken on that swing.
The photos, taken with the probe’s WISPR camera in visible light, show the wispy coronal mass ejections apparently crashing into one another and more generally offers clues about the origins of the solar winds that can eventually have an effect here at home.
“We are witnessing where space weather threats to Earth begin, with our eyes, not just with models,” said Nicky Fox, the associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, in a press release. “This new data will help us vastly improve our space weather predictions to ensure the safety of our astronauts and the protection of our technology here on Earth and throughout the solar system.”
The probe took its shots of the solar wind basically right after it leaves the sun’s corona, which again could help improve our understanding of space weather. It launched back in August 2018, and is scheduled to complete a total of 24 orbits around the sun; this is about as close as they will get, with another pass coming on September 15.
