This is the jaw-dropping image of the Sun captured by the world’s largest solar telescope

Operators of the world’s most powerful solar telescope have released a breathtaking new image of the Sun, having harnessed technology that is set to allow researchers to gain a deeper understanding of our solar system’s star.

In a press release published late last month, the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Solar Observatory (NSO) shared the close-up photograph of the Sun’s surface, on which huge sunspots, each measuring several thousand miles in diameter, are visible.

What are sunspots?

Described by the NSO as “areas of intense magnetic activity”, sunspots can cause solar storms - a phenomenon defined by NASA, the U.S.’s federal space agency, as “a sudden explosion of particles, energy, magnetic fields, and material blasted into the solar system by the Sun.”

Solar telescope harnesses Visible Tunable Filter

The detailed new image of the Sun was taken using the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, which is operated by the NSO at the Haleakalā Observatory on Maui, Hawaii.

Constructed “with a focus on understanding the Sun’s explosive behavior”, the NSO says, the telescope captured the photo using the Visible Tunable Filter (VTF), its most advanced piece of equipment.

Using a series of high-accuracy cameras, the VTF is able to take hundreds of two-dimensional photographs of the Sun in a matter of seconds. It can then combine these shots to generate a three-dimensional view of the Sun’s surface, allowing scientists to analyse the star’s structures and properties.

Researchers can use the VTF to gain information on aspects such as the temperature, pressure and magnetic field strength on and around the Sun’s surface.

“We get an unprecedented understanding of the nature of our home star, and the mechanisms driving solar phenomena,” the NSO says.

“A surreal moment”

“Seeing those first spectral scans was a surreal moment,” said Dr. Stacey Sueoka, a senior optical engineer at the NSO. “This is something no other instrument in the telescope can achieve in the same way. It marked the culmination of months of optical alignment, testing, and cross-continental teamwork.”

Why is it important to know more about solar storms?

By gaining greater insight into the Sun’s activity, scientists hope to learn more about how to forecast solar storms. When unleashed, such storms can have a significant consequences for our home planet, disrupting crucial technology such as radio and satellite communications.

“When powerful solar storms hit Earth, they impact critical infrastructure across the globe and in space,” says Carrie Black, the NSF program director at the NSF National Solar Observatory. “High-resolution observations of the Sun are necessary to improve predictions of such damaging storms.”

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