Parker Solar Probe Getting Closer to Touching the Sun

barbara hudson writes:

The Guardian is reporting on the closest ever approach to the sun of any space probe.

Nasa's Parker Solar Probe, which has flown closer to the sun than any spacecraft, has beamed back its first observations from the edge of the sun's scorching atmosphere.

The first tranche of data offers clues to long-standing mysteries, including why the sun's atmosphere, known as the corona, is hundreds of times hotter than its surface, as well as the precise origins of the solar wind.

[...] The observations also point to an explanation for why the corona is so blisteringly hot.

"The corona is a million degrees, but the sun's surface is only thousands," said Prof Tim Horbury, a co-investigator on the Parker Solar Probe Fields instrument at Imperial College London. "It's as if the Earth's surface temperature were the same, but its atmosphere was many thousands of degrees. How can that work? You'd expect to get colder as you moved away."

Parker's sidelong observations revealed that the particles in the solar wind appeared to be released in explosive jets, rather than being radiated out in a steady stream. "It's bang, bang, bang," said Horbury.

This rapid release of energy from the sun's interior into its atmosphere could help explain why the atmosphere is so staggeringly hot compared to the solar surface, he said.

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