How’s the weather… on the sun?!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Solar storms impact the Earth’s magnetic field, so we want to study them – from a safe distance, of course! Where is that, anyway?
The Sun has an outer boundary that changes with solar activity. Understanding these patterns could help predict solar storms.
Enter the Sun’s outer stellar boundary, with Samuel Badman and team from Harvard. They worked with NASA’s space probe, Parker.
The probe set records for proximity to the Sun’s surface. Four million miles sounds far, but it’s the closest we’ve ever been! With Parker’s data, the team mapped the Sun’s boundary and its changing patterns.
And the local temperature is… HOT!
References:
Badman, Samuel T, Michael L Stevens, Stuart D Bale, Yeimy J Rivera, Kristopher G Klein, Tatiana Niembro, Rohit Chhiber, et al. “Multispacecraft Measurements of the Evolving Geometry of the Solar Alfvén Surface over Half a Solar Cycle.” The Astrophysical Journal Letters 995, no. 2 (December 11, 2025): L37–37. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae0e5c.
Buckley, Michael, and Mara Johnson-Groh. “Parker Solar Probe Makes History with Closest Pass to the Sun.” Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory LLC, December 27, 2024. https://www.jhuapl.edu/news/news-releases/241227-parker-closest-approach.