The Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe - or WISPR - is the only imaging instrument aboard the NASA Parker Solar Probe (PSP) mission. The instrument - designed, developed and led by the US Naval Research Laboratory - records visible-light images of the solar corona and solar outflow in two overlapping cameras that together observe more than 100-degrees angular width from the Sun.
The below movies and animations provide details on both the PSP mission and our WISPR camera.
This animation shows Parker Solar Probe flying through the solar corona and coronal mass ejections. The fields-of-view of the WISPR telescopes can be seen as the transparent pyramids pointing out the side of the spacecraft.
[Credit: NASA/JPL/WISPR Team]
This is an animation showing an orbit of Parker Solar Probe in relation to data from NASA’s STEREO mission with the Sun shown to scale in the center of the image. The orbit and data time scales are also the same. The images are from NRL's STEREO/SECCHI imaging suite. STEREO is the same distance away from the Sun as the Earth at 214 solar radii or 93 million miles from the Sun. At closest approach, Parker Solar Probe will fly to 11 solar radii, which is about 4 million miles from the Sun. The fields-of-view of the Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe (WISPR) telescopes can be seen as the transparent pyramids pointing ahead along the orbit. WISPR is pointed slight away from the Sun to image the corona.
[Credit: NASA/JPL/WISPR Team]
This animation shows the fields-of-view (FOVs) of the two WISPR telescopes superimposed on data from the SECCHI instrument suite on NASA’s STEREO spacecraft. In this date, the Sun is in the center of the two circular coronagraph images. The image on the right is from SECCHI’s inner heliospheric imager. The movie shows how as Parker Solar Probe get closer to the Sun on each orbit, the size of the fields-of-view change. The FOV are scaled properly with respect to the size of the Sun, and the time scales of this change and the SECCHI images are the same.
[Credit: NASA/JPL/WISPR Team]
The velocity of Parker Solar Probe is fastest right at perihelion. The spacecraft is so fast that near perihelion, it flies faster than the Sun rotates. This animation illustrates this by following the track of the spacecraft on map of the surface of the Sun. When the spacecraft flies faster than the Sun rotates, the orbit track on the surface goes backward (retrograde). At the turning points (labeled co-rotation periods), the spacecraft and the Sun are essential moving together (co-rotation). These periods of time, which last many hours, will be invaluable for making continuous measurements of solar wind from the same source.
[Credit: NASA/JPL/WISPR Team]