Encounter 25 (2025-09-11 - 2025-09-20, with limited additional data 2025-08-18 - 2025-09-23)
This animation shows all L3 WISPR full-field observations from the twenty-second PSP Mission Encounter (2025-09-11 - 2025-09-20). We have superimposed a grid showing helioprojective longitude and latitude, and a scale representation of the size and location of the Sun in the observations using the SDO/HMI Carrington map for this time period. The velocity and distance metrics displayed on the movies correspond respectively to the spacecraft's heliocentric velocity in kilometers per second, and its distance from the Sun's center in units of solar radii (where 1 solar radius = 695,700km). The "FOV Range" label provides the plane-of-sky distance limits of the inner and outermost edges of the fields of view, in units of solar radii. The horizontal blue line indicates the orbital plane of PSP. The timespan of this composite movie covers only the nominal science window when the spacecraft was within 0.25 au; a limited amount of data outside of this range may be available at the below links.
You can download this movie directly as an 97MB mp4 file. This sequence is also available as data processed via the LW Algorithm developed by Dr. Guillermo Stenborg (JHUAPL) and detailed in Appendix A of Howard et al. 2022 (ApJ, 936, id.43. DOI 10.3847/1538-4357/ac7ff5). Please contact the team for access to this data, which will be posted here one year after the acquisition of those observations. Team contact information can be found in Section 1.2 of the WISPR User's Guide [PDF link].
[Credit: NASA/NRL/JHUAPL. Movie processed/compiled by Guillermo Stenborg (JHUAPL) and Karl Battams (NRL). SDO inset courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams.]
Solar Features
TBD
Comets and planets
A few Kreutz sungrazers are visible, along with two small "non-group" comets. Their exact identities still to be determined.
Planets as follows:
- TBD
Operations summary
Between August 18 and the beginning of the encounter, WISPR took advantage of extra telemetry to take additional images far outside of the nominal encounter distances, when there were potential overlaps with the fields of view of other instruments. These data have been released to the L1 and L2 level, but given the difficulty in providing a stable background over such large changes in radial distance, the team has not released backgrounds (L2b) or background-subtracted data products (L3 or LW). Anyone looking to do a more thorough science investigation during this period can contact the instrument team for assistance in processing these pre-encounter images.
Between October 18 and November 05, WISPR had an opportunity to observe the comet 3I/ATLAS. This was done using a moving subfield of the detector to capture the comet while limiting the amount of data required. These images are not standard WISPR images and cannot be used directly alongside the standard synoptic dataset. For more information see our 3I/ATLAS Data Page.
Miscellaneous notes
None.
Encounter 25 Data Products
- Encounter 25 Level-2 FITS (19 GB zip file)
- Encounter 25 Level-2b FITS, Background Models (16 GB zip file)
- Encounter 25 Level-3 FITS (15 GB zip file)
- Encounter 25 L1 and L2 Summary Files (<1 MB zip file)
- Encounter 25 Level-3 PNGs, Inner camera (1.6 GB zip file)
- Encounter 25 Level-3 PNGs, Outer camera (1.9 GB zip file)
- Encounter 25, Inner mpg, 480x512px (50 MB)
- Encounter 25, Inner mpg, 960x1024px (323 MB)
- Encounter 25, Outer mpg, 480x512px (214 MB)
- Encounter 25, Outer mpg, 960x1024px (1.1GB)
- Encounter 25, Inner mvi, 480x512px (539 MB)
- Encounter 25, Inner mvi, 960x1024px (2.2 GB)
- Encounter 25, Outer mvi, 480x512px (494 MB)
- Encounter 25, Outer mvi, 960x1024px (2.0 GB)
Released data for all encounters can be obtained from our WISPR Data Page. Descriptions of other encounters can be found on the Encounter Summaries Page.