Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

With the terrestrial news being, for the most part, a shitshow, I decided that I'd post about science for a second day in a row.  Cast your minds, but not your eyes, heavenward... NASA's Parker Solar Probe (would it have hurt to call it Icarus?) has flown through the sun's corona (finally, a positive corona story!).  The mission was to sample particles and to observe Sol's magnetic fields.  One goal of the mission is to research the solar wind, that stream of particles which bathe our planet and its celestial neighbors.

The Parker Solar Probe (would it have hurt to call it Icarus?) has already revealed some of Sol's mysteries, including reversals, dubbed 'switchbacks', of the star's magnetic field.  On the current flyby, which took it through the corona, the probe revealed that the corona is not uniform, but has peaks and valleys, which astrophysicists will try to correlate to surface features.

It's good to know that, even in this current period of malaise among humanity, there are still remarkable achievements being accomplished.  Stories like this prevent me from feeling despair about our species, we just have to get our act together and stop letting the stupidest, most corrupt people grab the reins of power.  Oh, hell's bells, there goes my sense of optimism again.

Post title taken from my favorite Pink Floyd song:

 

Yeah, I know the Parker Solar Probe (would it have hurt to call it Icarus?) isn't set to plummet into the heart of the sun, but indulge a guy who just wants to groove out on some Space Rock.