Some serendipitous space beauty to start your weekend.
NASA's new PUNCH mission, designed to study the solar wind, just took this ethereal image of the Moon passing the (blocked out) Sun. The Moon's night side is facing us, but it's beautifully lit by Earthshine.
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/punch/2025/05/12/nasas-punch-catches-first-rainbow-and-other-new-images/ #science #art #nature
More cool imagery from NASA's PUNCH mission. This shot shows the zodiacal light--the glow from sunlight reflecting off interplanetary dust--along with Taurus (top) and the Pleiades (upper right).
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/punch/2025/05/12/nasas-punch-catches-first-rainbow-and-other-new-images/ #space #science #astronomy #sun
Here's another intriguing view of the zodiacal light from PUNCH. This time the image is color-coded to show how sunshine gets polarized when it reflects off interplanetary dust.
Polarized light offers a way to "see" the invisible flow of the solar wind.
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/punch/ #science #space #astronomy #astrodon
@chris @coreyspowell I went to the NASA site for more info - nope, the satellites are in low earth orbit. So the Sun and Moon should look roughly the same size.
The alt text on the pic says that the ring around the occulter is diffracted light, not direct sunlight itself.
The occulter would be designed to be significantly larger than the disk of the Sun itself, so that's what you are mistaking for the diameter of the Sun.
@MichaelPorter @chris @coreyspowell
If I'm understanding the graphic on page 23 correctly (big if), the inner limit of the instrument is 6 solar radii, and it can't see closer to the Sun than that. That would be the size of the occulter, and the occulter is the big disk in the pic Corey posted. In that, the Moon is about 1/6 the width of the large dark disk in the middle (the occulter).
https://punch.space.swri.edu/files/DeForest-regis-20250505.pdf
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