The constellation of four satellites can absorb both narrow and wide field pictures of the sun to examine their corona and its sun wind.
The first light picture of April 14th by Punch's NFI Coronagraph shows the bright Korona around a blocked sun that focuses on the stars of the fish. The crescents on the right are image artifacts that do not appear after the instrument has been calibrated. Credit: NASA/SWRI/NRL
The NASA polarimeter to combine the Corona and HeliiSphere Mission (Punch) started on March 12th and sent a constellation of four erdorbing satellites with the aim of examining how the activity of the sun influences the space around the earth. This week the four satellites opened their cameras in the sky and conquered their so -called first light pictures in a large milestone for the mission. The successful snapshots show that the cameras work both in the focus and as expected, so that the mission can go forward.
Related: NASA's blow will examine how the sun affects the room around us
The parts of the blow
Punch consists of three identical satellites, each wearing a wide field image (WFI) and a satellite, which is equipped with a coronagraph with a narrow field image (NFI). The wide view of the WFIs enables the astronomers to examine the sun wind that goes far into space. In the meantime in the more immediate vicinity of the sun in the NFI houses to clear out the light from the light pane in order to present a duhnice-shaped area directly behind the surface. With this unique view, astronomers can see the strange, overwhelmed corona or the outer atmosphere of our star. The four simultaneous views can practically be combined into a final image so that astronomers can examine the phenomena of small and great care at once, in particular to learn how changes in the corona affect the sun wind that flows over the solar system towards earth.
NFI first light
The NFI opened its eye to the sky on April 14 and presented the sun against the background stars of the star bit fish. The view here was specially filtered to produce these background stars, which are otherwise edited by the bright zodiacal light, which is generated by sunlight from dust particles inside. A splinter of the sun corona in the center is also visible, which is reminiscent of the view during a ring -shaped solar eclipse.
You may notice some strange, streaked crescent -shaped artifacts on the right. These result from a small misalignment between the Imager and the sun, so that a stray sunlight can shred from the optics where it is not quite Blocked by the coronagraph. The engineers will use these and subsequent images to adapt the position of the NFI in the sky in order to fully compensate you to our star in future scientific data and to remove stray light. Ultimately, this calibration enables only one percent of the Corona view for the Imager and offers clear views of weak structures and changes within the corona, while the sun spit out material into space.
WFI first light
Two days later, on April 16, the three WFIs received their first look at the sun and looked at a wide view over the solar system. These instruments are designed in such a way that they look at the space of the room at about 45 ° from the position of the sun, approximately until the earth's orbit in the sky. Their visual fields do not overlap, but instead form a cloverleaf pattern that revolves over time.
This immense field of vision shows in the WFI First Light Image, which marks the position of the sun below (deliberately outside the field) and represents several constellations and other objects as a reference, including the asteroid 7 Iris, which photographs the shot in the lower one. In the entire picture, the intensive glowing of the zodiac light is excellent.
Science soon
It is worth noting that these first light pictures look very different than the scientific observations of punch. Although these shots show numerous stars and the bright zodiacal lights, scientists remove all this background light from the final images. This is the case that Punch can show a significantly detailed structure within Sun Corona and Sonnenwind, which can be pretty weak. In addition, Punch will be the first mission to show these characteristics in the polarized light, which shows how the electrical fields of the light waves are aligned and never provides information on how the wind behaves and develops over time.
Punch's commissioning phase is expected to take 90 days, according to which the group of four satellites will begin their two -year science mission.