00:00NASA just released these images of the sun's atmosphere showing the Parker Solar Probe's recent flyby of our host star.
00:08It skimmed just 3.8 million miles from the surface of the sun.
00:12That's more than 20 million miles closer than any spacecraft has traveled before.
00:17During this pass, the probe was immersed in the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere, called the corona, where solar wind is born.
00:24And the mission captured previously unseen details of the coronal material as it blasts out into space.
00:30So what does it show? There's a few things, actually, but let's focus on just one.
00:35Here you can see the collision of three large outbursts of solar material, called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs.
00:43When these powerful eruptions reach Earth, they can trigger beautiful auroras.
00:48They can also pose serious risks to satellites, power grids, and even subject astronauts to dangerous levels of radiation.
00:55But capturing coronal activity at such remarkably close range, and in high resolution, can help scientists better understand these phenomena.
01:04And that gives them game-changing new insights into solar winds and the precarious space weather that they create.
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