Abstract Details


Name: Craig DeForest
Affiliation: Southwest Research Institute
Conference ID: TVS202510130
Title: Imaging the Sun in Context with PUNCH: Mission Overview and First Results
Authors and Co-Authors:
Abstract Type: Invited by SOC
Abstract: The Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH), launched in March of 2025, is a NASA constellation space mission that is currently imaging the variable corona and solar wind out to 45 degrees from the Sun in all directions, continuously on a four minute cadence. The PUNCH flight assets are a constellation of four Observatories that work together to form a single “virtual instrument” with a very large field of view. PUNCH images Thomson-scattered visible light from free electrons in the corona and solar wind; this light is as little as 0.1% as bright as the surrounding starfield, which is removed digitally in the ground processing pipeline. PUNCH measures linear polarization of incident light; this provides information about the three-dimensional structure of features in th