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PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere)

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NASA’s PUNCH Catches First Rainbow and Other New Images

As instrument commissioning and calibration checks continue for NASA’s newly launched PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, its four spacecraft continue to deliver new images — including its first rainbow-colored view of the sky and the first images taken by two of its instruments.

The goal of PUNCH is to reveal new details of how the solar atmosphere, or corona, unfolds and streams through the solar system as the solar wind. It is the first mission designed to measure the corona and solar wind in three dimensions by studying the polarization of light, which is the direction light travels after it has been scattered by particles. In PUNCH’s images, the polarization is revealed through color coding, resulting in a rainbow image that gives scientists new insight on the solar wind’s movement.

Collectively, PUNCH’s four satellites include one Narrow Field Imager (NFI) and three Wide Field Imagers (WFIs). The NFI is a coronagraph, which blocks out the bright light from the Sun to better see details in the Sun’s corona. The WFIs are heliospheric imagers that view the very faint, outermost portion of the solar corona and the solar wind itself.

The mission’s fully processed science data will stitch together views from all four spacecraft and remove artifacts from the background of space and the cameras themselves. These early images help the mission team confirm that PUNCH’s cameras are in focus, working properly, and able to capture the quality observations needed to achieve the mission’s goals. Throughout the remainder of the commissioning phase, scientists will calibrate the instruments’ views to reveal illuminating details the Sun’s corona.

A Rainbow of Zodiacal Light

A hazy rainbow-colored glow rises from the bottom of the view, with colors transitioning from red on the far left to green in the center and blue on the far right. The glow is brightest near the bottom center, just above a yellow star symbol, and gradually fades moving upward. The background is black and speckled with stars, including a small cluster to the upper right of center and a larger, V-shaped arrangement of stars in the upper left.
On April 18, 2025, the WFI-2 instrument (which captured its first light on April 14) took images through all three of its polarizers in succession for the first time to create this view. The image is colorized to show the polarization (or angle) of the zodiacal light, a faint glow from dust orbiting the Sun. Hue indicates direction, and saturation indicates degree of polarization. For example, a pastel green feature would be slightly polarized in the horizontal direction, while a deep blue feature would be strongly polarized in a diagonal direction. The Sun’s location is marked with a star symbol. Other stars in the sky appear white because they are mostly unpolarized compared to the 7% polarization of the zodiacal light. The compact Pleiades star cluster appears just above center, and the V-shaped Hyades star cluster appears to the upper left of the Pleiades.
NASA/SwRI

WFI-1’s First Light

A hazy orange glow rises from the bottom of the view against a background of stars. The glow is brightest near the bottom center and gradually fades moving upward, but with a concentrated beam angled toward the upper right. A small star cluster appears in the upper right and a larger, V-shaped arrangement of stars appears near the top.
Captured on April 16, 2025, this is the first image taken by PUNCH’s WFI-1 instrument. The instrument’s wide field of view reveals the glow of zodiacal light stretching up and to the right. The V shape of the Hyades star cluster appears near the top, with the more compact Pleiades star cluster to the lower right.
NASA/SwRI

WFI-3’s First Light

A hazy orange glow rises from the bottom of the view against a background of stars. The glow is brightest near the bottom center and gradually fades moving upward, but with a concentrated beam angled toward the upper left. A small star cluster appears in the upper left, and a small, extended hazy object appears in the upper right.
Captured on April 16, 2025, this is the first image taken by PUNCH’s WFI-3 instrument. The instrument’s wide field of view reveals the glow of zodiacal light stretching up and to the left. The Pleiades star cluster appears on the left, while the Andromeda galaxy appears as a faint fuzzy object on the far right. The constellation Cassiopeia (which looks like a stretched-out W) appears at the top.
NASA/SwRI

NFI Spies the Moon

At the bottom, a dark disk is surrounded by a thin bright ring and then by two other larger, circular glows, with the inner circular glow larger and brighter than the outer one. The Moon appears to the upper right of the dark disk, inside the larger and brighter, innermost circular glow.
During commissioning, PUNCH’s NFI instrument captured this image of the new Moon as it passed by the Sun in the sky on April 27, 2025. The new Moon appears full, because it is illuminated by Earthshine (sunlight reflected off Earth). The image helped the PUNCH team confirm that the Moon will not obscure NFI’s view of the corona and solar wind. The dark circle near the bottom is the shadow of NFI’s occulter, which hides the Sun. The occulter, which was not yet fully aligned with the Sun, is surrounded by a narrow bright ring of diffracted light. Around that is a large, hazy circle of stray light glinting off the occulter (the Moon is inside that circle). Outside that is a small, dimmer region of the sky that is less affected by glint.
NASA/SwRI