The closest images ever made in the sun

Plasma eruptions rushing into each other, a solar wind visible in its smallest detail: the closest images ever made of the sun are a gold mine for scientists.

Caught by the Parker probe during its passage as close as possible to the star, on December 24, 2024, these images unveiled last week by NASA should deepen our understanding of the space weather and help to better protect the land against solar threats.

We have been waiting for this moment since the late 1950sexplains to AFP Nour Rawafi, scientific manager of the Parker mission.

Other space probes had already studied the sun before, but at a much higher distance.

Launched in 2018, the mission was baptized in tribute to the American astrophysicist Eugene Parker, who had described for the first time in 1958 the phenomenon of solar winds – continuous flow of particles from the sun.

The Parker probe recently entered its final orbit, which led it about 6.1 million kilometers from the surface of the sun. A proximity record reached for the first time the day before Christmas 2024 and repeated twice since, in March and June, according to a cycle of 88 days.

To give an order of magnitude, if the distance between the earth and the sun was equivalent to a kilometer, Parker would only be around forty meters from our star.

Unpublished images

The single camera of the vessel, the Wispr (Wide-Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe), captured images while Parker explored the external layer of the atmosphere of the sun, called crown.

Mounted in a short video of a few seconds, these new images reveal for the first time in high resolution of coronal mass ejections (CME) – immense wreaths of ionized particles which play a role in the appearance of spatial weather phenomena.

These eruptions are notably at the origin of the spectacular northern lights visible in a large part of the world last May.

We have several stacked cmes on top of each other, this is what makes them if uniqueexplains Nour Rawafi. It’s really incredible to see this dynamic at work.

Another striking detail: the solar wind, visible on the images as a flow from the left, follows a structure called helospheric current tablecloth – an invisible border where the magnetic field of the sun rocks from north to south.

This is crucial to study, because it plays an essential role in the spread of solar eruptions and in their potential impact on earth.

Spatial weather can indeed have heavy consequences: it can overload electrical networks, disrupt communications and damage satellites.

While thousands of additional satellites must enter orbit in the coming years, their follow -up and the prevention of collisions are more and more complex, especially during solar disturbances, which can slightly shift their trajectory.

Nour Rawafi is particularly enthusiastic for the future, while the sun is now heading for the minimum of its activity cycle, expected within five to six years.

Some of the most extreme sun storms took place during this downward phase, such as the famous Halloween storms From 2003, which forced astronauts from the international space station to take additional precautions against radiation.

Capture one of these gigantic eruptions … it would be a dreamsays the scientist.

Parker still has much more fuel than initially expected and could continue to operate for several decades, until its solar panels deteriorate to the point of no longer providing enough energy to maintain the orientation of the probe.

When its mission will finally end, the probe will slowly disintegrate until it becomes, according to Nour Rawafi, part of the solar wind itself.