PUNCH and Parker Solar Probe enter a staring contest three times per year, as each looks directly at the other for a few days. A movie is available: https://youtu.be/tYYsbD0Q7O4
Parker Solar Probe (PSP) orbits the Sun three times per year in a highly elliptical orbit, passing through the corona itself at perihelion. PUNCH stays at Earth, surveying the entire inner solar system. PSP is always within the PUNCH field of view, allowing joint cross-scale studies of coronal and solar wind physics. This movie and still image, made by the PUNCH Science Operations Center’s Sam Van Kooten, highlight that relationship. The PUNCH intermediate-data-product movie (F corona removed; starfield intact) at left shows the Parker Solar Probe orbit. The overlain geometry shows the field of view of the WISPR instrument on board PSP. WISPR looks out from PSP through the imaged projection planes, producing the grayscale images at right (courtesy G. Stenborg, WISPR Consortium).
On 16 September 2025, as PSP whipped around the Sun after its perihelion pass, Earth itself, including PUNCH, became visible in the WISPR images. The celestial “staring contest”, across a full astronomical unit of distance, lasts for about a week as PSP gradually rotates and eventually drops its gaze.
PUNCH and PSP together offer the deepest cross-scale instrument ever made to study the sun, covering a factor of one billion in scale. That's like simultaneously observing the contestants in the 100-yard dash, the cellular biology of the lead runner, and also the structure of a cold virus that the lead runner just inhaled. By understanding the physics of cross-scale phenomena like turbulence in the solar wind, scientists hope to better understand our environment, and how our star ... affects you.
This is PUNCH Nugget #32. PUNCH nuggets are archived at the [PUNCH mission website].(https://punch.space.swri.edu/punch_news_archive.php) You can sign up to receive PUNCH nuggets by email.*
