Perihelion 22 will occur at 11:41 UT on December 24, 2024, at a record breaking heliocentric distance of approx. 0.046 au, or 9.86 solar radii. This is the first perihelion to reach this distance and cross more deeply into sub-alfvenic wind than ever before. As such, this perihelion is historic. The perihelion will be occurring with the spacecraft in the earthward-facing part of the Sun prior to perihelion and with both Solar Orbiter and STEREO-A spacecraft observing the Sun along similar longitudes. The respective heliocentric distances are 0.95 AU (Solar Orbiter) and 0.97 AU (Stereo-A). The PSP spacecraft footpoint is expected to dash across the solar disk from the eastern to the western limb inbound and disappear beyond the western limb a few hours after perihelion, at about 18:00 UT on December 24, and will spend its first 9.86Rs perihelion in quadrature with the Earth. From December 21 onward, the spacecraft will be closer than 40 Rsun. Therefore, the Parker footpoint prediction team will issue daily source predictions on December 21 - 24 for joint studies with other spacecraft data. Footpoint predictions will also include updates of the likelihood of flare and CME activity from currently visible active regions based on the CCMC flare and CME Scoreboards, respectively, although the current SDO data outage is expected to impact our flare prediction capability.
Daily predictions of projected PSP footpoints will appear here starting Dec 21, 2024.
Realtime information about satellite positions, the Sun, and solar features. See the Max Millenium active region/flare targeting pages for information about solar activity and the UAH MAG4 page for information on event forecasting.
Connectivity map for the planets and PSP and STEREO -- Click on image for live map
(CCMC PSP campaign page)
NOTE: As of 2024/11/26, the Sun Today servers are offline due to a burst water line in the server building.
