Brief
NASA’s PUNCH mission releases year‑long video of the Sun’s corona
The video, processed from data collected since June 2025, visualises the corona’s temperature, particle flow and magnetic structures.
By Felo News Desk · Published
NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission has released a video that stitches together a full year of observations of the Sun’s corona, according to Scientific American.
What happened
The four‑spacecraft PUNCH constellation has been orbiting Earth with a permanent solar eclipse created by a coronagraph since June 2025. The instrument’s Narrow Field Imager captures the outermost layer of the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona, without exposing its optics to direct sunlight. The newly processed data have been compiled into a continuous video that shows the corona’s evolution over twelve months.
What the reports add
The article explains that the corona is millions of degrees hotter than the Sun’s surface and is filled with free‑moving protons and electrons. Because the plasma is nearly a perfect electrical conductor, the charged particles spiral along magnetic field lines, making those lines visible as bright golden rays in the video. Explosive coronal mass ejections (CMEs) appear as sudden bursts of magnetised plasma erupting from the Sun.
What was said
Craig DeForest, principal investigator of PUNCH, told Scientific American that the outflowing protons and electrons “can’t coalesce into atoms because of all that heat, but that leaves them free to become almost perfect electrical conductors.” Alfred de Wijn, a research engineer studying the corona, said the sunlight reflected off the electrons “tells us about the amount of particles in the corona and the shape of the magnetic field.”
How it came about
NASA designed PUNCH to bridge the gap between solar‑surface observations and the heliosphere, unifying measurements of the corona and solar wind. By using a coronagraph that blocks direct sunlight, the mission can continuously monitor the corona without the risk of damaging its instruments. The year‑long video is the first visual record of the corona’s dynamic behaviour over an entire solar cycle phase, offering researchers a new tool to study magnetic field evolution and CME triggers.
Key facts
- NASA’s PUNCH mission has been observing the Sun’s corona since June 2025. (scientificamerican.com)
- The mission uses a coronagraph to create a permanent eclipse for its Narrow Field Imager. (scientificamerican.com)
- The released video shows a full year of corona activity, including magnetic field lines and coronal mass ejections. (scientificamerican.com)
- Craig DeForest said the plasma in the corona is almost a perfect electrical conductor. (scientificamerican.com)
- Alfred de Wijn said reflected sunlight reveals particle density and magnetic field shape. (scientificamerican.com)
Sources
- [1] scientificamerican.com — originally reported as “Watch the sun’s corona dance for an entire year”
