A fascinating rainbow of space dust caught by the NASA PUNCH mission

The mission to study the influence of the Sun on the solar system published its first images.

Where does the Sun end and the solar system begin? The answer is not clear. The Sun's atmosphere - the corona - extends far into space, and its processes form the solar wind, which flows in interplanetary space, affecting planets, satellites and much more. To better study these interactions, NASA launched a mission consisting of four spacecraft, and now some of their magnificent first images are here.

The mission has a narrow-field educator (NFI) and three broad-field images (WFI). NFI photographs the corona around the Sun using an occulter that blocks the Sun's light. This approach is useful as long as you do not want to see too close to the Sun, because, as you can see in the picture below, sunlight will diffracte on it, creating these beautiful rings of wandering light.

Other missions see closer to the Sun; there is Proba-3 from the European Space Agency, where two spacecraft line up so that the one ahead could be occult, delivering an eclipse on demand. But in fact, solar eclipses are best for this - so you either wait to get it or plan a mission that can deliver them monthly, following the Moon in special orbits.

And speaking of the Moon, it's a bit strange to see it so clearly in the photo above. This photo was taken during the new moon phase, where the near side, the side we see, is experiencing the night. The reason why we can see it is the earth's radiance, the sunlight reflected on our planet and the illumination of the shaded surface of the Moon.

Instead, WFI looks away from the Sun and into the plane of the solar system, providing the second side of understanding that this two-year mission strives for. They look at the zodiacal light. This is created by dust, which spreads across the solar system, although mainly along its plane, capturing sunlight. Interestingly, the zodiacal light was also the subject of study of Dr. Brian May's thesis; he took a 36-year break before completing it, because he became somewhat busy with his band Queen.

Different instruments study zodiacal light in slightly different ways to build a three-dimensional picture of interplanetary space to find out how coronal structures turn into solar wind, as well as how explosive events such as coronal mass emissions then spread through interplanetary space. The most beautiful of all photos is, of course, the rainbow from WFI-2.

The colors are not real, but they are placed on it for scientific reasons. Colors are associated with the polarization of light, the angle at which light waves oscillate. The shade of color is used to indicate the direction, while saturation is the intensity. "The pastel-green feature will be slightly polarized in the horizontal direction, while the dark blue line will be strongly polarized in the diagonal direction," NASA explained in a statement.

The mission will be very important for understanding the Sun and its influence, and it is replenishing the array of new spacecraft and telescopes that can now observe our star like never before.