During commissioning, the PUNCH NFI instrument captured this image on 4/27/2025: the new Moon, roughly 3.5° from the Sun itself in the sky. The Moon is illuminated by Earthlight.
Commissioning of the PUNCH instruments is ongoing. As part of that activity, we ran the first full-orbit NFI (Narrow Field Imager) science sequence on Sunday, April 27. NFI captured several images of the Moon passing by the Sun, as seen in this unfiltered “Level 0” image in the standard PUNCH pseudocolor palette. The new Moon appears full, because it is illuminated by Earthshine from the full Earth (as seen from the lunar surface). This image is useful to demonstrate that the Moon does not directly interfere with NFI’s primary science, as it is not bright enough to impact the existing pattern of glinting stray light.
Raw NFI images can be confusing. The innermost dark circle is the shadow of the occulter, which hides the Sun. The occulter, which was not yet fully aligned with the Sun, is surrounded by a narrow bright ring of diffracted light. Around that is a large hazy circle of stray light glinting off the occulter itself, and the Moon is inside that circle. Outside the circular stray light patch is a small region of the sky that is less affected by glint. The upper darkest corners of this cropped image are outside the field of view. The stray light pattern itself is stippled with small dark spots caused by contamination on the CCD surface. More highly processed (“Level 1” and beyond) images will suppress both these patterns and other effects, to show the evolving corona and solar wind.
This is PUNCH Nugget #11. PUNCH nuggets are archived at the PUNCH mission website. You can sign up to receive PUNCH nuggets by email. NASA official releases about PUNCH are at the NASA PUNCH blog.
