PUNCH mission tracks solar eruptions, providing continuous views of CMEs and space weather.
NASA’s PUNCH reveals coronal mass ejections erupting from the Sun in detail.
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NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission has released refined images capturing massive solar eruptions called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from October 21 to November 12, 2025. For the first time, scientists can continuously trace these ejections from the Sun’s outer atmosphere into interplanetary space. The images, taken from four small spacecraft, reveal CMEs as cloud-like features moving away from the Sun and also captured objects such as comet Lemmon, Venus, and Mercury. This data improves understanding of space weather affecting Earth and the solar system.
NASA’s PUNCH Mission Delivers Wide-Field Sun Images, Tracks Powerful CMEs Impacting Earth
According to a NASA report, PUNCH mosaics images from all four spacecraft together, creating the first wide-field pictures of the Sun’s corona and solar wind. The mission detected a combination of several CMEs during that time, one of the storms, in mid-November was classified at G4 (second-highest level), and produced visible auroras over several southern U.S. states. The information also aids the prediction of disturbances to satellites, power grids, and human operations in space.
“Level 3 images are an important step because, up to now, we’ve been able to track CMEs and estimate their impact at Earth only when they emerge on the far side of the Sun,” mentioned Craig DeForest, PUNCH principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute.
PUNCH Mission Enhances Solar Wind Understanding, Provides Publicly Available High-Resolution Sun Data
This data is being constantly updated to the benefit of sensitivity and precision. The observations are part of a collaborative effort with other NASA missions, including Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter and IMAP in order to gain a more complete picture of solar eruptions and their effects on space weather.
The four PUNCH spacecraft make continuous observations of Earth’s day-night boundary and display the corona-solar wind transition in highly detailed images accessible for research and space weather purposes worldwide.
