How spacecraft gymnastics enabled joint Sun observations
On 1 June 2022, the ESA-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft was turned slightly and rolled to one side, so that the Metis instrument could see the part of the Sun’s atmosphere, known as the corona, through which NASA’s Parker Solar Probe was flying. This manoeuvre meant that for the first time, solar physicists recorded both the in-situ behaviour of the magnetised gas known as plasma that constitutes the solar corona, and the large-scale consequences.
These plots show the movement of Parker Solar Probe through the Metis field of view. A real image from Metis is shown. The fuzzy red disc is a result of the coronagraph that blocks the glare of the bright Sun to enable observations of the fainter corona. The black disc is a mask to compress the image size to reduce the amount of unnecessary data downlinked. The cross marks the centre of the Sun, and the small circle around the cross represents the outline of the Sun itself. The Parker Solar Probe icon is not to scale.
