The newest NASA spacecraft aimed at studying the Sun has captured a colorful “rainbow” in the warm shine of the zodiac light observed on the earth.
The punch mission (polarimeter to unify the crown and the helosphere), which was launched on March 11, consists of four small satellites that work in low terrestrial orbit to provide a complete vision of the Crown of the Sun, or Oternred Emospher Bysphere, and studies and studies and stressphereer, and study and study and stample and sugar Replenere, and Study and Study and Study or Saw. Solar wind.
The mission delivered its first set of images, including a vivid view of the rainbow color, according to a NASA statement that shared the last images of punch.
These images have zodiac light: the weak and diffuse brightness created by sunlight that disperses dust particles in space. In a view captured by the WFI-2 instrument of the Punch Mission on April 18, a foggy shine passes from red to the left green in the center and blue to the right, located in a stars bottom curtain.
The coloration of light in this image does not represent a true optical rainbow as seen with the naked eye, but rather a colored representation of different wavelengths of light that highlight the capacity of the instrument to analyze.
The mission measures the crown and the solar wind in three dimensions when studying the poliazation of the light, which is the director that the light travels after it has dispersed through the participations. The four satellites include a narrow field summary (NFI), which blocks the bright sunlight to see better details in the crown.
On April 27, the NFI instrument captured the new moon when it passed through the sun, using its Octúcar (an object that blocks a direct view of the sun) to hide the solar disc. These first images help the punching mission team to calibrate the instruments and make sure they are working as expected.
The Punch spacecraft also includes three field images (WFI), which are designed to see the very weak and outermost portion of the crown and the solar wind. The WFI-1 instruments and WFI-3 also captured the soft brightness of the Zodiac light on April 16, with the Hyades and Pliades stars groups and the Andromeda galaxy in sight.
Andromeda’s galaxy can be seen as a faint faint spiral at the right right of the image below. The ‘W’ form of the Cassiopeia constellation can be done at the top. Family pensions can be seen on the left side of the image.
Punch was launched on March 12, 2025 on a Spacex Falcon 9 rocket of the Vandenberg space force base in California. Mounting next to the four Punch satellites there was another new NASA spacecraft, called Spherex.
Like the James Webb space telescope, Spherex-who represents the spectrum-photometer for the history of the universe, the time of reion and ICES explorers in the cosmos with infrared eyes. However, unlike the James Webb space telescope, Spherex is designed to have a wide view of the universe to create a new map of the visible sky.
“We are literally mapping all the heavenly sky in 102 infrared colors for the first time in the history of humanity,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of the NASA Science Mission Management, said a Spherex conference on January 31.
