Michael Wheatland, an astrophysicist at the University of Sydney who wasn’t involved with the research, said the imagery was “just incredible”.<\/p>\n
“We’ve never observed the Sun at that resolution,” Professor Wheatland said.<\/p>\n
“In this amazing detail, we see all of this really interesting fundamental physics happening.”<\/p>\n
Whirling patterns on the Sun’s surface<\/p>\n
The observations show the solar surface, called the photosphere, constantly swirls and flows with plasma.<\/p>\n
According to the researchers, these ebbs and flows show the plasma undergoes a physical process called Kelvin-Hemholtz instability.<\/p>\n
This effect happens when different types of fluids mix, causing small fluctuations at the borders between them.<\/p>\n
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“You see it in clouds, you see it in the ocean, you see it whenever you have fluids,” Professor Wheatland said.<\/p>\n
“But we haven’t actually seen it on the Sun in a way that’s really unambiguous. I think the evidence here is completely unambiguous.”<\/p>\n
On Earth, this instability is often driven by fluids of different temperatures or densities, or moving at different speeds. On the Sun, the differences come from changes in magnetism.<\/p>\n
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The striations seen on the solar surface are caused by differences in magnetism. (Supplied: NSF\/NSO\/AURA\/MPS)<\/p>\n
“When you mix the fluid, you move the magnetic field around as well,” Professor Wheatland said.<\/p>\n
This mixing can lead to an increase in energy which could be the reason the Sun’s corona \u2014 the outer part of its atmosphere \u2014 is so hot.<\/p>\n
The Sun’s surface is roughly 5,500 degrees Celsius, but the corona above it can reach 2 million degrees.<\/p>\n
The solar telescope in Hawaii<\/p>\n
Hannah Schunker, an astrophysicist at the University of Newcastle, said because the Sun was so close to Earth \u2014 a mere 149 million kilometres away \u2014 it was the only place astronomers could study the surface of a star in detail.<\/p>\n
“The Sun is like an astrophysical laboratory,” Dr Schunker, who also wasn’t involved with the new research, said.<\/p>\n
The observations were made with the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, in Hawaii, which is run by the US National Science Foundation.<\/p>\n
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The telescope is named after Daniel Inouye, who represented Hawaii in the US Senate from 1963 to his death in 2012. (Supplied: NSF\/NSO\/AURA)<\/p>\n
Solar telescopes use the same basic technology as other large optical telescopes \u2014 large mirrors and lenses which magnify light \u2014 but since they’re designed to focus on the Sun, they need to be purpose-built.<\/p>\n
“The Sun is just so bright and produces so much more heat and light than a distant star,” Dr Schunker said.<\/p>\n
“So it requires specialised filters, cooling systems and instruments that can be safely pointed at the Sun without damaging the telescope.”<\/p>\n
Friedrich Woeger, senior scientist at the US National Solar Observatory and co-lead author on the paper, said that while preparing for and analysing the observations required months of work, the imagery they captured spans only a few minutes.<\/p>\n
“The acquisition of the data used in the study itself actually did not take much longer than five minutes,” Dr Woeger said.<\/p>\n
Predicting space weather<\/p>\n
Dr Schunker said was important to understand the Sun’s magnetic field because it drives all space weather.<\/p>\n
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