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The new amazing images of a huge dark spot on the sun look like a heart or a flaming flower.
The sunspot, where strong magnetic fields meet hot gases bubbling from within, is about 10,000 miles wide. It’s wide enough for the Earth to have some wiggle room inside.
On January 28, the world’s largest solar observatory, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope on the Hawaiian island of Maui, captured the phenomenon in unprecedented detail. The National Science Foundation, owner of the telescope, released the image and a video of the sunspot on Friday.
“The sunspot image achieves a spatial resolution about 2.5 times higher than ever before, showing magnetic structures just 20 kilometers on the surface of the sun,” Thomas Rimmele, associate director of the National Solar Observatory of the NSF, who runs the telescope, he said in a news release.
Sunspots form in areas where the sun’s magnetic field is so powerful that it lowers atmospheric pressure, which in turn lowers the temperature. In this case, the dark spot is a cold temperature of 7,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
The flower petal-shaped stripes extending from the dark spot result from the interaction between magnetic fields and hot gases bubbling from beneath the surface.
This murky action is visible in the video clip below. It captures approximately one and a half minutes of solar activity in real time, compressed into just four seconds. The chassis is approximately 12,000 miles wide.
NSF / NSO / AURA
Inouye could help predict the sun’s violent eruptions
The Inouye telescope made a splash when it released its first observations in January. Although the telescope wasn’t finished yet, its earliest images of the sun were clearer than those of any previous telescope.
A footage from the Inouye Solar Telescope shows how the sun’s plasma moves across its surface.
NSO / NSF / AURA
This powerful lens could help scientists unravel the mysteries of space weather and even predict solar events that could be dangerous to humans.
This is because the entire solar system is located within the outer confines of the solar atmosphere. The electrically charged magnetic particles from the sun constantly pour over the planets in a constant stream called the solar wind. This magnetic flux creates auroras as it interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere. But violent explosions on the sun emit waves of electrically charged particles that can damage crucial technology.
A solar wind animation shows particles flowing from the sun to the Earth.
NASA
By using Inoye to study the dynamics of these events, scientists could begin to predict them.
Inouye could also help solve a great mystery: why the sun’s corona is up to 500 times hotter than its surface. Astronomers have struggled to understand this phenomenon since the 1940s.
Construction of the telescope was supposed to finish in June of this year, but the pandemic put it off until 2021.
The Inouye solar telescope is located near the summit of Haleakalā in Maui, Hawaii.
NSO / AURA / NSF
“The telescope’s start of operations has been slightly delayed due to the impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic,” David Boboltz, NSF program director for Inouye, said in the statement.
But he added that “this image represents a preview of the unprecedented capabilities the structure will bring to our understanding of the sun.”
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