{"id":626678,"date":"2026-09-16T18:30:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T18:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/626678\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T18:30:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T18:30:20","slug":"the-highest-resolution-image-of-the-sun-ever-taken-revealed-tiny-swirls-scientists-had-never-seen-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/626678\/","title":{"rendered":"The Highest Resolution Image of the Sun Ever Taken Revealed Tiny Swirls Scientists Had Never Seen Before"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A high-resolution image of the Sun at 416 nanometers taken by the Inouye Solar Telescope. Credit: NSF\/NSO\/AURA\/MPS, CC BY 4.0<\/p>\n

This is the highest-resolution image of the Sun ever taken.<\/p>\n

It was captured by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST<\/a>) in Hawaii, the largest solar telescope in the world, on 14 April 2025.<\/p>\n

The image zooms in on a small patch of the Sun\u2019s surface in visible light. The whole image spans 5,800 kilometers (3,604 miles) horizontally and 4,350 kilometers (2,703 miles) vertically, covering a mere 0.0004% of the Sun\u2019s surface. Each pixel is 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) per side.<\/p>\n

Take a close look at the grid-like pattern and see if you can spot small swirls among the feathered edges.<\/p>\n

\"-3\"<\/a>Astronomers watched the Sun\u2019s surface in incredible detail for 3 minutes and saw for the first time evidence of a fundamental fluid process. Credit: NSF\/NSO\/AURA\/MPS, CC BY 4.0<\/p>\n

Here are two spots with swirling plasma.<\/p>\n

\"-3\"<\/a>The inset here zooms in on a small patch of the Sun\u2019s surface with the telltale swirl of Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities (KHI) just tens of kilometers across. Credit:\u00a0NSF\/NSO\/AURA\/MPS<\/a>,\u00a0CC BY 4.0<\/a><\/p>\n

\"-3\"<\/a>Another region of the same image shows even more KHI fingerprints, suggesting that these instabilities might be common on the Sun\u2019s surface. Credit:\u00a0NSF\/NSO\/AURA\/MPS<\/a>,\u00a0CC BY 4.0<\/a><\/p>\n

The tiny swirls and vortices are called Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, and this is the first observational confirmation that they exist on the Sun. The swirls are manifestations of a physical process that could play a crucial role in how the Sun\u2019s plasma bubbles and bursts.<\/p>\n

\u201cKelvin-Helmholtz instabilities are one of the fundamental instability processes in magnetofluids, fluids, and gases,\u201d said\u00a0David Kuridze<\/a>. Kuridze studies plasma in the solar atmosphere at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Boulder, Colo., and is colead researcher on the discovery.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did not set out to find Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities,\u201d added colead researcher\u00a0Friedrich W\u00f6ger,<\/a>\u00a0who studies flow dynamics of the solar photosphere at NSO. \u201cThe experiment was targeted at finding the most efficient way to reach the diffraction limit of the telescope. And the nice thing is, not only did we succeed with that but we also found Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

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When Plasmas Flow By<\/p>\n

Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities<\/a>\u00a0(KHI) are caused by the edges of two streams of fluid flowing past each other at different speeds. And \u201cfluid\u201d is quite a broad term, geophysically speaking. Scientists have spotted these swirls and vortices in\u00a0estuaries<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0oceans<\/a>, as well as in\u00a0Earth\u2019s clouds<\/a>; the skies of\u00a0Mars<\/a>,\u00a0Jupiter<\/a>, and\u00a0Saturn<\/a>; and interactions between the\u00a0solar wind<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0planetary magnetospheres<\/a>, Kuridze explained.<\/p>\n

Astronomers have\u00a0long suspected<\/a>\u00a0that KHI exist on the Sun\u2019s surface. The solar photosphere is a fluidlike plasma, so it would make sense for it to follow the same rules as any other fluid, albeit with the added complication of the Sun\u2019s magnetic field. What\u2019s more, the existence of KHI could explain some of the Sun\u2019s more mysterious phenomena, like\u00a0braided magnetic field lines<\/a>,\u00a0eruptions<\/a>, and the\u00a0ultrahot corona<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cKelvin-Helmholtz instabilities are a very effective mechanism to twist and bend magnetic structures\u201d and generate magnetic energy, Kuridze said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the big questions is, How much energy can these vortices create and transport up into the outer atmosphere of the Sun, and is it enough to heat it up to millions of degrees kelvin?\u201d W\u00f6ger said.<\/p>\n

But until recently, actually spotting these instabilities on the Sun\u2019s surface was impossible. Picking out small vortices within the solar plasma requires specialized instruments installed on solar telescopes, and previous generations of solar telescopes were simply not powerful enough to see them. When DKIST\u00a0came online<\/a>\u00a0in 2019, its 4-meter (13-foot) mirror immediately changed the game by allowing astronomers to view the bubbling, boiling solar surface at several wavelengths and at smaller scales than ever before.<\/p>\n

\u201cDKIST\u2019s resolving capacity is equivalent to finding a quarter from a distance of 50 kilometers,\u201d said\u00a0Michail Mathioudakis<\/a>, a solar astrophysicist at Queen\u2019s University Belfast in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

Roil and Toil<\/p>\n

Kuridze, W\u00f6ger, and their team pushed DKIST\u2019s resolving power to the max to zoom in on a small part of the Sun near a sunspot for a few minutes. This slow roiling is what they saw.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we looked at these data and the movie, we immediately recognized the signature of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability,\u201d W\u00f6ger said.<\/p>\n

After they spotted the telltale signs of KHI, the observing team asked their modeling partners to simulate the motions of the Sun\u2019s magnetically influenced fluidlike plasma, or magnetohydrodynamics, at a similarly high resolution. Creating simulations with the level of detail needed to compare with the DKIST observations requires phenomenal computational power and likely wouldn\u2019t have happened without these observations as motivation, W\u00f6ger said.<\/p>\n

Those simulations, based on fundamental physics and fluid dynamics principles, confirmed that the vortices captured by the DKIST images were likely created by KHI. The DKIST observations show that KHI might be ubiquitous across the Sun\u2019s surface. This discovery was\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Nature\u00a0in August.<\/p>\n

\u201cModels of the solar atmosphere have shown indications of this instability, but the paper has identified this physical process observationally in some of the smallest astrophysical scales,\u201d said Mathioudakis, who was not involved with the research. \u201cWhat surprised me the most is that this discovery was made with a relatively simple imaging setup and does not involve complex instrumentation, calibration issues, or data inversions. It will therefore stand the test of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Small Swirls, Big Energy<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very notable observation because Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in photospheric shear flows has been predicted theoretically for decades, but the relevant spatial scales were simply too small to resolve directly,\u201d said\u00a0Claire Foullon<\/a>, a solar and space physicist at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is more surprising is how DKIST reveals it to be so widespread,\u201d Foullon added. \u201cRather than being an occasional phenomenon, the observations suggest that this may be a fundamental part of the small-scale dynamics of the magnetized photosphere.\u201d Foullon was not involved with the new discovery.<\/p>\n

As KHI swirl around and around in the solar photosphere, they can twist up magnetic fields and store up energy. All that energy has to go somewhere, and many solar scientists think it might contribute to heating up the Sun\u2019s corona.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are effectively seeing, for the first time, dynamics on the scales at which the\u00a0magnetic foot-points<\/a>\u00a0of the corona are being continually stirred and restructured,\u201d Foullon said.<\/p>\n

The degree to which KHI contribute to coronal heating is still unknown, as is whether KHI exist on even smaller physical scales on\u00a0the Sun<\/a>. These might remain open questions for a while, Kuridze said, as observers figure out ways to push DKIST to even smaller physical scales and as simulations stretch farther to match.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always this nice tension between simulation and observation,\u201d W\u00f6ger said. \u201cWhen we see something [in observations], then we\u2019re pushing the numerical simulations. And sometimes in the numerical simulations you see something, and then we\u2019re trying to see whether it actually exists on the Sun.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in EOS Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n


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