What's next for the Sun after the solar eclipse?

If you were lucky like me and got to see the corona for the first time with your own eyes on August 21, I think it is safe to say you are hooked on all things solar!  It was my first eclipse and I can still feel the excitement when describing the corona that I saw.  I saw red filaments and a wispy pointy streamer.  It was one of the most beautiful things I have seen! And the event around it was also amazing!  I saw my colleagues travel to all sorts of places from Oregon to South Carolina to Nebraska and Wyoming meeting new people and enjoying all that America has to offer.  It warms my Midwestern heart to see so many people enjoying it!  And the genuine interest and curiosity about the Sun and the great young people I met at the educational events were my favorite parts!

It was a great event but what is next for our Sun? What does one do between eclipses?  The Sun will be expecting a visitor from Earth- NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) #ParkerSolarProbe!

Photo Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

PSP will launch July 31, 2018 and will speed towards its rendezvous with Venus before it has its first encounter with the sun.  Over the missions seven year lifespan, there will be 24 encounters with the sun and 6 more (for 7 total) Venus gravity assists.   There will be 4 scientific instrument suites, FIELDS, ISOIS, SWEAP and WISPR, that will sample the Sun in various ways to understand 3 of its unsolved mysteries.  An instrument named WISPR will take pictures of all the gas and material leaving the sun. FIELDS will sample the electric and magnetic fields.  ISOIS will look in many directions to find the energertic particles that are a major player in space weather. SWEAP will sample all the hot gas (plasma) that makes up most of the Sun's wind. 

As for the mysteries, we have some big ones!  I will cover each of those in the next few weeks blogs! The first is why when you walk away from a heat source you get hotter!  Imaging leaving a fireplace and getting warmer?!??! 

You have less than a year till the next great solar event!  Follow Paker Solar Probe on the journey to the Sun!