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A short version of one of the first photographs from Punch. | Credit: NASA/SWRI/NRL
The scientists announced on Friday (April 18) that the latest solar investigator in the city has taken up its first photographs-I should say the latest solar Investigator. This means that this NASA mission called Punch is technically made up of four small satellites that are strategically distributed in the orbit of our planet. However, the quartet is designed in such a way that they work together as a single instrument to decode some of the greatest secrets of our star.
“All four instruments work like designed. We are pleased to end the order of the orbits and work together,” said Craig Deforest in the Department of Science and Exploration of the Solar System in Boulder, Colorado.
What you see in these pictures is a bunch of stars that are visible as weak against a dark sky, which is anchored by a soft amber man. This beautiful luminescent is known as “Zodiacal Light”, a diffuse glow that arises from dust particles that circle the sun that reflects the sunlight to earth. If you look closely at the stars, there are even some constellations such as Taurus and Cetus in the scene. However, if everything is planning, the future cosmic pictures of Punch will not have any stars at all – or Zodiacal.
The ultimate purpose of Punch is to use its four instruments three-field image leaders (WFI) and a near-field imagator (NFI) to isolate features in the sunwind. This is because one of the large sunny mysteries that aims to solve the mission is the riddle of how the outer atmosphere of the sun or corona turns into the sunwind.
If you can imagine an invisible bladder in our cosmic neighborhood, also known as the barrier between our solar system and the rest of the universe, this entire bladder is filled with streams of charged particles that are released from the solar corona. The filling of this bladder is the sun wind, and the bladder itself is known as a heliosphere.
However, in order to come to conclusions about the transition between Solar Corona, Solarwind and Heliosphere, scientists have to isolate extremely weak characteristics within the entire sun material – and these characteristics do not disturb like background stars or zodiac light.
On April 14th, Punch opened the doors of two instruments, collected this first photo and demonstrated that the cameras are in focus, worked properly and took up the “night” sky against the “12 -year” glare of space. Several known constellations are visible, including Taurus (exactly right of the middle) and the pleiaades (top right). | Credit: NASA/SWRI
“During the entire commissioning phase, the Punch team calibrates the NFI data to remove 99% of the light to show materials that stream out of the outer atmosphere of the sun,” said Deforest. “The three WFI pictures of first light show star fields, but the ultimate goal is to remove the star field and other background light and to keep the weak shimmer of the sun wind on earth.”
However, these first light images prove that the instruments are usable and work in such a way that this process can take place. According to the explanation, an NFI and a WFI were activated on April 14, and the other two NFIs were activated on April 16.
This composition of pictures with First Light, which was recorded on April 14 by Punch/WFI2 (top) and Punch/NFI (insert), shows how the field of vision match. If the four NASA room vehicles are fully used, they will work together to see a field of 90 degrees. Constellations have been identified to display the size of the field of vision. | Credit: NASA/SWRI
As soon as everything seems to be going well, we will hopefully deal with how punch should use a characteristic of light as polarization.
“A polarimeter is a camera that can measure polarized light, as you could see it through polarized sunglasses, and we use this to measure what we map in three dimensions,” said Deforest before in a press conference. “When we look at the sun wind, we look at sunlight that the actual material is scattered that we see. This spreading process polarizes the light and what polarization degree shows us, where the object was in three dimensions.”
Related stories:
– How AI scientists helps to unlock some of the deepest secrets of the sun
– A hidden sun cycle awakened, but more extreme space weather in the next 50 years may not be a bad thing
– The Daredevil Solar SpaceCraft of NASA survives the 2nd end flying of our sun
In addition, it seems that the team has succeeded during the 90-day commissioning of the punch mission to demonstrate the skills of new “water-powered, shotful” rocket engines. These engines that the team says can carry a safe and non -toxic bivide, and work on the spacecraft that crosses an electrical current through water to produce shops of hydrocarbon and oxygen. This hydrogen and oxygen can burn as a fuel if the team has to correct the airways of space vehicles.
Deforest says that the “security and stability” of this drive system is worthwhile, probably because, as explained in the statement, each of the satellites has to maneuver hundreds of times in order to maintain the correct position.
Punch started on March 11th and shared with the SPHEREX mission of NASA (which is basically a wide angle like a wide-angle james webb world dream telescope). After Punch’s commissioning phase finally came to an end, we should release scientific information this summer. The data analysis begins in June.
