Unitecho

Although the closest star to Earth has been widely studied, the Sun still maintains some secrets. But perhaps not for long, as a veritable armada of solar science missions may soon unlock the last mysteries. “In my opinion, the most interesting and significant solar discoveries have been coming from the Parker Solar Probe,” says Russell Howard, head of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Solar and Heliospheric Physics branch in Washington, D.C., and principal investigator for Parker’s Wide-field Imager for Solar PRobe (WISPR). Parker, which launched in 2018, “has been making both in situ and remote sensing observations from … much closer to the Sun than ever before.” Recently, the probe revealed that the Sun’s magnetic field is surprisingly complex far from the star. The simple dipole (like a bar magnet) structure researchers expected is there, Howard says, but overlaid with other structures as well, which scientists are now modeling to better understand. Soon to observe in tandem wit