Scientists grasp the sharpest picture of the sun and reveal magnetic “stripes”.
In an impressive new breakthrough, scientists from the National Solar Observatory of the US National Science Foundation have recorded the most detailed view of the sun surface ever recorded. With the mighty Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, the team ultra-thin magnetic “stripes” discovered only 20 kilometers over the length of Manhattan.
These bright and dark ligaments, which are referred to as stripes, move on the edges of solar granules and are generated by delicate, curtain -like magnetic fields. While sunlight flows through these magnetic structures, it shifts the brightness, similar to how the light changes when it lights up through a waving curtain.
The discovery shows a hidden layer of complexity in the magnetic landscape of the sun and shows the incredible ability of the Inouye telescope to recognize characteristics that are once considered invisible by the earth. It opens the door to a deeper understanding of how sun magnetism drives strong events such as torches and storms in space.
Unveiling the hidden strips of the sun with breakthrough resolution
A team of solar physicists made a remarkable discovery and uncovered complicated magnetic patterns on the surface of the sun. With the unsurpassed power of the solar telescope by Daniel K. Inouye in Hawaii, scientists have taken the most detailed images of the sun surface ever recorded. For the first time, they watched ultra -thin bright and dark stripes in the sun, only 20 kilometers wide, over the length of Manhattan.
These strips known as stripes appear along the edges of solar convection cells, which are referred to as granulate. They are caused by sensitive, arched magnetic fields that move like fabric in the wind and open. When light flows from the hot granulate walls through these magnetic “curtains”, a striped pattern is created that reflects subtle changes in the magnetic field of the sun. Lighter areas show stronger fields, while darker regions are weaker.
The sharpest view of the sun – always
“In this work we examine the fine structure of the sun surface for the first time with an unprecedented spatial resolution of almost 20 kilometers or the length of the island of Manhattan,” says NSO scientist Dr. David Kuridze, the main author of the study. “These stripes are the fingerprints of fine -step magnetic field variations.”
The results were not expected and were only possible due to the unprecedented skills of the Inouye Solar Telescope. The team used inouyes visible broadband imagator (VBI), which worked in the G-Band, a certain visible light that is particularly useful to examine the sun, because it highlights areas with strong magnetic activity and makes it easier to see features such as solar spots and fine-scale structures such as those in the study. The Setup enables the researchers to better observe the solarphotos sphere in an impressive spatial resolution better than 0.03 arch seconds (ie approx. 20 kilometers on the sun). This is the hottest that has ever been reached in solar eastonstronomy. In order to interpret your observations, the team compared the pictures with state -of -the -art simulations that restore the physics of the sun surface.
Small magnetic twists, great knowledge
The study confirms that these stripes are signatures of subtle but strong magnetic fluctuations – variations of only a hundred Gauss, comparable to the strength of a typical fridge magnet – that the density and capacity of the plasmaMove the visible surface by only kilometers. These shifts known as Wilson depression are detectable thanks to the unique resolution of the 4-meter primary level of the NSF-Binouye solar telescope, the largest in the world.
“Magnetism is a fundamental phenomenon in the universe, and similar magnetically induced strips have also been observed in further distant astrophysical objects such as molecular clouds,” says the study, Dr. Han Uitenbroek, shares. “Inouyes high resolution in combination with simulations enables us to better characterize the behavior of magnetic fields in a wide astrophysical context.”
Effects on space weather and earthly technology
The study of the magnetic architecture of the sun surface is improved for understanding the most energetic events in the external atmosphere of the sun – such as torches, eruptions and coronal masses – and consequently the predictions of space weather. This discovery not only improves our understanding of this architecture, but also opens the door for the examination of magnetic structures in other astrophysical contexts – and on small standards that are once unreachable from the earth.
“This is just one of many first for the inouye that shows how it continues to drive the limit of solar research,” says NSO Associate Director of the NSF Inouye Solar Telescope Dr. David Boboltz. “It also underlines inouyes important role in understanding small physics that drives room weather events that affect our increasingly technological society here on earth.”
The paper in which this study entitled “The striped solarphotors 'sphere, which was observed at 0.03' '' resolution”, is now available The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Reference: “The solarphotors 'sphere of David Kuridze, Friedrich Wöger, Han Uitenbroek, Matthias Rempel, Alexandra Tritschler, Thomas Rimmel, Catherine Fischer and Oskar Steiner, May 2025, observed with 0.03' resolution”. The astrophysical journal letters.
DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/Add470
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