Inouye Solar Telescope captures sharpest-ever images of the Sun

Astronomers using the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii have captured the highest-resolution images ever of the Sun’s visible surface. The observations, published in the journal Nature, reveal plasma vortices and structures as small as 20 kilometres across, providing the first unambiguous detection of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the solar photosphere.

These tiny, spiral-shaped features occur when layers of plasma move at different speeds, creating shear that generates swirling disturbances. Similar phenomena are observed in Earth’s oceans and planetary atmospheres. Scientists believe these vortices may play a critical role in transporting magnetic energy through the solar atmosphere.

This discovery offers potential clues to solving the long-standing mystery of why the Sun’s corona is significantly hotter than its visible surface. The record-breaking images were obtained by focusing on a magnetically active region near a sunspot, utilizing a combination of the Inouye telescope, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, and the Max Planck FastCam.