History is made after NASA's Parker Solar Probe becomes the first spacecraft to 'touch the Sun' while taking footage of the star's upper atmosphere.
The footage consists of a series of images that have been composed together by scientists into a video. The amazing result shows highly energised particles forming a stream as the probe enters deeper into the star's atmosphere.
The ribbon-like structure visible in the Sun's atmosphere is often referred to as 'pseudostreamer'.
NASA released a statement saying:
"Passing through the pseudostreamer was like flying into the eye of a storm. Inside the pseudostreamer the conditions quieted, particles slowed and the number of switchbacks dropped — a dramatic change from the busy barrage of particles the spacecraft usually encounters in the solar wind."
The zig-zag-looking magnetic structures are what scientists call 'switchbacks' and are a product of the magnetic explosions taking place in the atmosphere of stars. But in its journey, the probe detected the presence of these in solar winds as well.
Parker Solar Probe project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Nour Raouafi, said:
"We see evidence of being in the corona from magnetic field data, solar wind data, and visually in white-light images."
When the images were captured, the probe was travelling at a speed of over 142 km per second through the Sun's atmosphere. The footage obtained offers an invaluable source of evidence to further the scientists' understanding of our home star.
[Based on reporting by: Futurism]
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