[Tangent: Space / Solar Science] Parker's Lithe Craft Appears, Anew...

Just for some Friday night's fun, we offer a look at the data we expect from the Parker Solar probe, in the next three months -- now that it has pierced the heliosphere -- the outer atmosphere of the Sun.

This is still the only spacecraft presently in service that is named for a living human.

That he's still on faculty just south of here, still brings a grin to my face -- every time it crosses my mind:

. . .As NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completes its latest swing around the Sun, it’s doing so in full view of dozens of other spacecraft and ground-based telescopes.

These powerful instruments can’t actually see Parker itself – the van-sized spacecraft is far too small for visible detection – but they offer from a distance what the probe is sensing close-up, as it samples and analyzes the solar wind and magnetic fields from as close as 5.3 million miles (8.5 million kilometers) from the Sun’s surface. . . .

Now you know -- do go be excellent to one another, this weekend and always -- for as the depravity unfolding in Ukraine is teaching us all, daily. . . we are all we've got.



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