Sunspot Dunn Solar Telescope Supports NASA's Parker Solar Probe

The probe takes measurements of various sun features – such as temperatures, densities and magnetic fields – but does not see what it looks, he said.

"It's like one of those rotating watering heads," McAteer said. Imagine detecting water droplets in a certain part of your lawn and that was all you had. We'll tell you what the sprinkler looks like, what the sprinkler does instead of the water droplets. We will be able to say that when this plasma came from the sun, here is what (the sun) looked like. "

He added that Sunspot was participating in the mission because the other telescopes in the world could not maneuver to see where the probe would be.

"It's a complex task, because the connectivity between the sun and the spot space traversed by the Parker solar probe is not just a straight line connection," he said. "We constantly use models to predict where it is."

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The sunspot observatory will be the target of NASA's Parker solar probe from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon. (Photo: Photo File / Daily News)

The data will be shared with the global solar community after their acquisition, McAteer said.

"Anyone can pick him up," he said. "We are looking forward to seeing how many people want to use it."

This weekend is unique because the probe will travel at the same speed as the sun, which means it will stay above the same part of the sun until it is returned to the solar system, said McAteer.

The probe flies towards the sun and will gain speed by taking advantage of planetary gravity and helping its orbit around the sun. The craft had its first gravitational assistance from Venus in early October, according to a NASA press release.

The gravitational aids will help the spacecraft to make increasingly tight orbits around the sun, bringing it to its closest orbit in 2025. The craft will perform 24 orbits around the sun during its mission , says the release.

The sunspot observatory will play a similar role each time the probe orbits the sun, McAteer said.

Parker's mission will last 7 years and will lead to an orbit that will take the probe to within 3.83 million kilometers of the sun's surface, much closer than previously achieved, the press release said.

According to the statement, the spacecraft will be subjected to brutal heat and radiation conditions, bringing humanity closer observations of an unprecedented star and helping us understand the phenomena that have baffled scientists for decades.

The observations will add essential knowledge to NASA's efforts to understand the sun, where changing conditions can propagate in the solar system, affecting the Earth and other worlds, states of liberation.

The discoveries of the probe are particularly important for human life on Earth.

The findings of the Parker Solar Probe will help researchers improve their prediction of space weather events that can damage satellites. (Photo: Photo Courtesy / NASA)

Findings from the spacecraft will help researchers improve their predictions of space weather events, which could damage satellites and astronauts in orbit, disrupt radio communications and, in the most severe cases, submerged electrical networks, launch states. .

The probe has gone through several stages since its launch in August.

Earlier this week, the probe exceeded the previous record of 26.55 million miles from the sun's surface to become the closest synthetic object that could approach the star.

The spacecraft has also become the fastest spacecraft to travel compared to the sun, breaking the 153,454-mile record set by Helios 2, a US-German spacecraft launched in 1976, according to a press release. press.

The maximum speed of the probe will reach 430,000 miles per hour in 2024, the statement said.

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