APOD: 2025 March 31 – Parker: The Solar System from Near the Sun
If you watch long enough, a comet will appear.
Before then, you will see
our Solar System from inside the orbit of
Mercury as recorded by
NASA's
Parker Solar Probe looping around the
Sun.
The video captures coronal streamers into the
solar wind, a small
Coronal Mass Ejection, and planets including,
in order of appearance,
Mercury,
Venus,
Saturn,
Earth,
Mars, and
Jupiter.
Between the emergence of Earth and Mars,
Comet Tempel 1 appears with a distinctive tail.
The continuous fleeting streaks are
high energy particles from the Sun impacting Parker's sideways looking
camera.
The featured time-lapse video was taken last year during
Encounter 21,
Parker's 21st close approach to the Sun.
Studying data and images from
Parker are delivering a better understanding of the
dynamic Sun's effects on Earth's
space weather as
well as humanity's power grids,
spacecraft, and space-faring astronauts.