https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQj–Kjn0z8

https://www.universetoday.com/140878/heres-the-first-image-of-the-sun-from-the-parker-solar-probe/

It’s been 124 days since the Parker Solar Probe was launched, and several weeks since it made the closest approach any spacecraft has ever made to a star. Now, scientists are getting their hands on the data from the close approach. Four researchers at the recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C. shared what they hope they can learn from the probe. They hope that data from the Parker Solar Probe will help them answer decades-old question about the Sun, its corona, and the solar wind.

Scientists who study the Sun have been anticipating this for a long time, and the waiting has been worth it.

“Heliophysicists have been waiting more than 60 years for a mission like this to be possible. The solar mysteries we want to solve are waiting in the corona.” – Nicola Fox, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters.

The excitement is all around the PSP’s first solar encounter phase. From Oct. 31 to Nov. 11, 2018, Parker Solar Probe completed the first solar encounter phase, speeding through the Sun’s outer atmosphere — the corona — and collecting unprecedented data with four suites of cutting-edge instruments. The PSP will orbit the Sun 24 times, for 24 solar encounter phases. During the mission, the probe will use 7 Venus gravity-assist flybys to incrementally shrink its orbit around the Sun.