Sun's swirling surface captured in spectacular detail by world's largest solar telescope
Astronomers have captured the highest-resolution imagery of the Sun's surface using the world's largest solar telescope. The images reveal a physical process called Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, providing new insights into solar plasma dynamics.
Why it matters
Understanding these solar processes helps scientists better predict violent solar outbursts that can impact Earth's technology and communications infrastructure.
The Sun's surface is constantly churning with hot, glowing plasma.
Those swirling eddies play a huge role in the Sun's occasional violent outbursts, but they're difficult to see because it is so bright.
Now astronomers have used the world's largest solar telescope to capture the highest-resolution imagery ever taken of our star's roiling surface.
It shows a section of the Sun about 5000 by 3500 kilometres in size: a zone that, on Earth, could comfortably enclose mainland Australia.
The stunning imagery also captures a never-before-seen physical process, which the researchers have described in the journal Nature .
Michael Wheatland, an astrophysicist at the University of Sydney who wasn't involved with the research, said the imagery was "just incredible".
"We've never observed the Sun at that resolution," Professor Wheatland said.
"In this amazing detail, we see all of this really interesting fundamental physics happening."
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