Getting Close Up And Personal

"All of this brand new information about how the way our star works is going to help us understand how the sun drives change in the space environment throughout our solar system."
Nicola Fox, director, Heliophysics Division, NASA

"[The instrument picked up other powerful waves] kind of like rogue waves in the ocean."
"[Each wave would last seconds to minutes] just as quickly, in seconds, it goes past us, and we're back in the normal solar wind."
"These are very large and energetic events. We're really excited about this, because we think it tells us a possible path to understanding how energy is getting from the sun into the atmosphere and heating it."
Justin C.Kasper, professor, space sciences and engineering, University of Michigan

Parker Solar Probe: close to the sun   NASA

Launched last year, NASA's Parker Solar Probe after three loops toward the sun reaching speeds eclipsing any ever produced by a man-made vehicle, released findings on December 4, hailed as revelations of the sun's dynamics recognized as stranger than science has yet imagined. As the vehicle passed within some 24 million kilometers of the surface of the sun in its first two probes, it sent back observations resulting in the publication of four papers in the journal Nature.

The data collected and avidly studied by astrophysicists may in time lead to the development of processes whereby advance warning of solar storms with the potential to knock out satellites and electrical grids, or post a danger to the health of astronauts in orbit. The sun is comprised of the most space-common elements, making it a huge sphere comprised of hydrogen and helium.

Scientists have puzzled for decades over what and why it is that produces the superheated atmosphere of the sun where its surface is about 5,600 degrees Celsius, and in the thin atmosphere above it, known as the corona, the heat is even more incomparably intense. In a leap of a factor of 300 and over, the corona's temperature soars to over a million degrees, and its heat accelerates solar wind.

Solar wind is a phenomenal 1.5 million kph stream of particles flying away from the sun. Professor Kasper, linked to one of the four experimental instruments aboard the probe, theorized that vibration of the sun's magnetic fields was critical to the corona's heating. The opportunity to discover what such vibrations would appear as, closer to the sun was his goal.

And just as he and his colleagues anticipated the vibrations did increase their momentum but an added bonus was that additional, powerful wave activity was also picked up by the instrument. So that the spacecraft, swept by the speed of the solar wind, in seconds saw a rise by 480,000 kph, with each wave lasting seconds to minutes. The direction of the magnetic field flipped, producing S-shape twists, as a result of the strength of the waves.

 Energy particle impact will help scientists understand how these events accelerate

Credits: ESA/NASA/SOHO

Scientists, thanks to the closer view of the sun, now have a firmer grasp of where solar wind originates. Moving at  relatively slow speeds of under 1.6 million kilometers per hour on slow mode, the solar wind emerges from locations linked with sunspots and where hydrogen and helium are colder and less dense, called sun spots, near the sun's Equator.

A picture of the cloud of dust surrounding the sun and the corona comprised of bits shed from comets and asteroids is emerging from the spacecraft. Thinner closer to the sun, the dust matches expectations for a dust-free zone around our star that has long been theorized, and thanks to the probe, finally confirmed.

Parker Solar Probe saw cosmic dust (illustrated) scattered throughout our solar system

"It's a bit early to say whether these discoveries actually overturn existing models."
"They definitely show that there is a lot more happening close to the sun and that it's absolutely worth going there to explore further."
Daniel Verscharen, Senior Research Fellow. Dept of Space & Climate Physics. Faculty of Maths & Physical Sciences, University College London

Parker Solar Probe observed switchbacks — traveling disturbances in the solar wind that caused the magnetic field to bend back on itself — an as-yet unexplained phenomenon that might help scientists uncover more information about how the solar wind is accelerated from the Sun.

Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez