The largest and most powerful solar telescope on Earth has just given us breathtaking new views of the surface of the Sun.
In a series of new images, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope's observations reveal the intricate details of sunspot regions, the roiling convective cells, and the motion of plasma in the solar atmosphere down to a resolution of around 20 kilometers .To the distances into context, a single solar convection cell is just a little smaller, on average, than the US state of Texas.
These new Inouye images, however, are not designed just to make you feel tiny and insignificant, they're a sneak preview of the science to come, as researchers analyze the solar surface in exquisite detail to understand the processes that take place thereon. A region approximately 30,000 kilometers across, showing a well-formed sunspot: umbra, umbral dots, and penumbral filaments are all clearly visible.
Often bigger than our entire planet, sunspots are typically short-lived blemishes where magnetic fields are unusually powerful, appearing darker than the surrounding regions thanks to their relatively lower temperatures. They're also associated with our Sun's more violent outbursts: as magnetic field lines tangle, snap, and reconnect, they unleash incredible outbursts of energy in the form of coronal mass ejections and solar flares.
Sunspot activity isn't constant. It's tied to cycles of roughly 11 years, during which sunspot and flare activity rises to a peak at solar maximum, and falls to almost nothing during solar minimum. At solar maximum, the Sun's poles switch places; we're currently on the path to a solar maximumAnother sunspot demonstrating the light bridge phenomenon.
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