All articles tagged with #solar corona
During the 12 August total solar eclipse over Greenland, researchers will have about two minutes at observing sites in Spain and Iceland to study the corona with spectrometers and high‑resolution cameras, aiming to answer why the corona is millions of degrees hotter than the Sun's surface and how magnetic energy heats it, with the goal of improving space‑weather forecasts ahead of the 2027 eclipse.
In 1973, the Concorde 001 prototype flew at Mach 2+ to chase the Moon’s shadow across Africa, carrying a multinational team and four ceiling portholes to study the Sun’s corona at multiple wavelengths. The mission achieved a record 74 minutes of totality imaging—the longest ever from an aircraft—before headwinds shortened the window. Led by Pierre Léna, scientists from France, the UK, and the US conducted infrared, dust, gas, and chromosphere observations, following two rehearsal flights with a precise ground-less rendezvous, and landing in N’Djamena after the eclipse to cap a historic feat in solar astronomy.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, built by Johns Hopkins APL and launched in 2018, has reached about 430,000 mph—its fastest pace yet—while skimming the Sun’s corona at roughly 3.8 million miles from the surface and enduring temperatures around 1,700°F, to study the Sun’s atmosphere; the mission’s future is under review amid NASA staffing and budget pressures, with the article noting another fast self-propelled craft, New Horizons, for comparison.
Parker Solar Probe survives near the Sun not by withstanding a single furnace-like temperature, but through a precisely engineered heat-management system: an 11.5 cm carbon‑carbon shield with a white ceramic coating, a clever shadow geometry, restricted conduction, water‑cooled solar arrays, and radiators that keep most of the spacecraft at room temperature while the sunward face glows at roughly 1,400 C. Instruments sit in or around the shield’s shadow and are made from high‑temperature materials, with seven sun sensors ensuring the shadow stays aligned. The mission’s radiation comes from intense sunlight (about 500 times Earth’s flux) rather than a million‑degree plasma, so the shield reflects energy and slows conduction, while the rest of the solar‑wind science package samples the environment from the edge of the shield. The result is a spacecraft designed to stay cool enough to operate while approaching within ~6 million kilometers of the Sun.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe reached about 692,000 km/h (192.22 km/s) relative to the Sun while skimming the Sun’s corona during its 28th close approach in June 2026, a record for a human-made object. The peak speed comes from a highly elliptical near-Sun orbit aided by Venus flybys; Parker’s shield protects its instruments as it studies coronal heating and solar wind, with mission extensions still under review and no sustained cruise speed implied by this record.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe crossed the solar corona during perihelion and recorded protons at energies far above what existing reconnection-driven acceleration models at the heliospheric current sheet could predict, linking magnetic island merging in the reconnection exhaust to a near-Sun source of high-energy particles and prompting questions about the limits of current particle-acceleration theories and implications for coronal heating.
The Sun’s visible surface sits at about 5,500°C while the corona soars to 1–2 million degrees; scientists agree magnetic energy powers this heating but debate remains over whether Alfvén waves, nanoflares, or a combination drive it, with missions like Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter narrowing the options but not yet solving the mystery.
The Parker Solar Probe remains the fastest human-made object, zipping through the Sun’s corona at about 430,000 mph and protected by a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-foam heat shield; after seven Venus gravity assists it now sits in its closest solar orbit, operating autonomously and returning data on the corona and solar wind as NASA extends the mission beyond its original plan.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe travels about 430,000 mph as it skimms the Sun with a 4.5-inch carbon-foam thermal shield that keeps its instruments near room temperature, enabling unprecedented study of the corona, solar wind, and magnetic switchbacks during close solar passes.
ESA's Proba-3 regained contact after about a month of silence thanks to a rare sunlight window that provided power to the tumbling coronagraph satellite; engineers will carefully re-power and test the two-satellite formation as they continue to study the solar corona.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe delivered unprecedented close-up data from the Sun’s corona, enabling researchers to use the Arbitrary Linear Plasma Solver (ALPS) to analyze how particles respond to waves in the Sun’s plasma. The study shows how heating and damping shape the solar wind near the Sun, with cooling of particles occurring more gradually than expected as they stream outward—improving space weather forecasts and informing similar plasma processes in the universe.
Scientists using NASA's Parker Solar Probe have discovered the helicity barrier, a process that explains why the Sun's outer atmosphere is much hotter than its surface and how the solar wind is accelerated, providing new insights into plasma turbulence and space weather prediction.
Scientists using NASA’s Parker Solar Probe have discovered the helicity barrier, a process that explains how the Sun’s outer atmosphere becomes much hotter than its surface and how the solar wind is accelerated, solving long-standing mysteries about solar plasma behavior and turbulence.
Despite extensive research, several mysteries in our solar system remain unsolved, including the formation of the asteroid belt, Uranus' extreme axial tilt, the Sun's corona temperature anomaly, Saturn's hexagonal storm, and the interstellar object 'Oumuamua, each posing significant questions about planetary and solar phenomena.
In 1973, the Concorde 001 aircraft was transformed into a high-altitude observatory to chase the Moon's shadow during a solar eclipse, achieving the longest totality ever recorded at 74 minutes by flying at supersonic speeds, which revolutionized eclipse observation and solar research.