Using NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and other near-Earth spacecraft, scientists from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have made and validated the first 2D maps of the Sun’s outer surface, leading to unprecedented insight into how and where the Sun “loses its grip” on its outer atmosphere.
Cambridge, MA (December 11, 2025)— Astronomers have produced the first continuous, two-dimensional maps of the outer edge of the Sun’s atmosphere, a shifting, frothy boundary that marks where solar winds escape the Sun’s magnetic grasp. By combining the maps and close-up measurements, scientists from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) showed that the boundary grows larger, rougher and spikier as the Sun becomes more active. The findings could help scientists improve models showing how the Sun affects Earth, and better predict atmospheric complexity for other stars.
“Parker Solar Probe data from deep below the Alfvén surface could help answer big questions about the Sun’s corona, like why it’s so hot. But to answer those questions, we first need to know exactly where the boundary is,” said Sam Badman, an astrophysicist at the CfA, and the lead author of the paper.
The scientists have directly validated these maps using deep dives into the Sun’s atmosphere made by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. The findings are published today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters (ApJL).
The boundary in the Sun’s atmosphere where the solar wind’s outward speed becomes faster than the speed of magnetic waves, known as the Alfvén surface, is the “point of no return” for material that escapes the Sun and enters interplanetary space; once material travels beyond this point, it cannot travel back to the Sun. This surface is the effective “edge” of the Sun’s atmosphere, and provides scientists with an active laboratory for studying and understanding how solar activity impacts the rest of the solar system, including life and technology on and around Earth.
Using Parker’s Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP) instrument, developed by the CfA in conjunction with the University of California, Berkeley, the scientists collected data from deep into the Sun’s sub-Alfvénic surface.
“There are still a number of fascinating physics questions about the Sun’s corona that we don’t fully understand,” said Michael Stevens, an astronomer at the CfA and the principal investigator of Parker’s SWEAP instrument. “This work shows without a doubt that Parker Solar Probe is diving deep with every orbit into the region where the solar wind is born. We are now headed for an exciting period where it will witness firsthand how those processes change as the Sun goes into the next phase of its activity cycle.”
“Before, we could only estimate the Sun’s boundary from far away without a way to test if we got the right answer, but now we have an accurate map that we can use to navigate it as we study it,” added Badman “And, importantly, we also are able to watch it as it changes and match those changes with close-up data. That gives us a much clearer idea of what’s really happening around the Sun.”
Scientists previously knew this boundary changes dynamically with solar cycles, moving away from the Sun and becoming larger, more structured, and more complex during solar maximum, and the opposite during solar minimum, but until now didn’t have confirmation of what exactly those changes looked like.
Badman added, “As the Sun goes through activity cycles, what we’re seeing is that the shape and height of the Alfvén surface around the Sun is getting larger and also spikier. That’s actually what we predicted in the past, but now we can confirm it directly.”
The new maps and corresponding data can help scientists answer important questions about the physics happening deep in the Sun’s atmosphere; that knowledge can in turn be used to develop better solar wind and space-weather models, sharpening forecasts of how solar activity moves through and shapes the environment around Earth and other planets in the solar system.
It can also help them to answer longheld questions about the lives of stars elsewhere in the galaxy and the universe, from how they’re born to how they behave throughout their lives, including how that behavior influences the habitability of their orbiting planets.
The team’s findings offer a new window into the workings of our closest star and lay the foundation for ever deeper discoveries. According to Badman, the coordinated multi-spacecraft approach, which combined the observational powers of close-up probes and distant observing stations including the Solar Orbiter, a project of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), and NASA’s Wind spacecraft, will continue to serve as a model for future breakthrough studies in heliophysics. During the next solar minimum, the team will again dive into the Sun’s corona, with an aim to study how it evolves over a complete solar cycle.
Resource
Badman, S. T. et al, “Multi-spacecraft measurements of the evolving geometry of the Solar Alfvén surface over half a solar cycle,” Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2025 Dec 11, doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ae0e5c
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