[ad_1]
German researchers can now reveal complicated structures in solar plasma: with their solar telescope, they can now observe the star in high resolution. This required a complex conversion.
The largest European solar telescope “Gregor” took sharp images of the fine structure of the sun. With the device, the researchers were able to resolve details of just 50 kilometers in the sun, announced the Leibniz Institute for Solar Physics (KIS) in Freiburg.
That corresponds to a tiny fraction of the sun’s diameter of 1.4 million kilometers. “It’s like seeing a needle on a perfectly sharpened soccer field from a kilometer away.”
“The project was quite risky”
The solar telescope is operated by a German consortium under the leadership of KIS and is located at the Teide observatory on the Spanish island of Tenerife. In order to be able to take the images in high resolution, the optics, mechanics and electronics of the device were completely redesigned in just one year. “The project was quite risky because such telescope conversions often take years,” KIS Director Svetlana Berdyugina said, according to the announcement.
With the telescope’s new optics, scientists could now examine in detail, for example, magnetic fields, turbulence, solar flares and sunspots, the institute said. “The first images, taken in July 2020, show amazing details of the development of sunspots and complex structures in the solar plasma.”
