Briefly: the PUNCH mission to monitor the Sun states that they are still tracking interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, even though the small body has passed “behind” the Sun (as seen from Earth). In other words, ‘solar conjunction’: bsky.app/profile/kwalsh4a.bsky.social/post/3m2rnxlgigs2v “While 3I Atlas… Read More »PUNCH Sun Conjunction Mention
Briefly: I post on the PUNCH mission, since Sungrazing comets are relevant (including ‘comets’- asteroids passing so close to the Sun that rock vaporizes and emits). Now, PUNCH is relevant for (barely) tracking 3I/ATLAS as it starts going behind the Sun… Read More »PUNCH Catches ATLAS Passage
The American Astronomical Society (AAS) will hold its biannual (Summer) meeting in Anchorage, Alaska this week. Even though this “general” meeting includes the sub-meetings of the Laboratory Astrophysics Division and Solar Physics Division, there’s still relevant content here for the… Read More »Summer AAS Meeting 2025 (Anchorage)
The launch of the SPHEREx spectrometry mission and PUNCH heliospheric mission, on a single rocket, was successful. All four PUNCHes and SPHEREx deployed from the second stage. SPHEREx, for one, has successfully communicated with the ground; the PUNCH team has… Read More »SPHEREx, PUNCH Up
Launch delay, again. The SPHEREx mission (plus the PUNCH cluster as secondary payloads) is on hold for the time being; issues with the Starship rocket apparently warrant an investigation across the SpaceX booster lineup.