One of the world’s most powerful solar observatories has recently completed a major upgrade. And now, the Gregor Solar Telescope in Spain has taken some extremely high-resolution images of our sun obtained in Europe.
In the new images upgraded by the telescope, between rowing activity on the surface of the sun, small details as high as 50 kilometers (31 miles) can be known.
“It was a very exciting, but very challenging project,” said Lucia Clint, a physicist and lead scientist at the Leibniz Institute of Soldier Physics (KIS). “In just one year, we completely redesigned the optics, mechanics and electronics to achieve the best image quality.”
Gregor (left) and his redesigned optics (right) (KIS)
Interestingly, while COVID-19L downdown is a barrier to scientific research, in this case, they have been helpful. According to a post on the KIS website, scientists were trapped in the observatory during the March lockdown in Spain. Instead of wasting time, they will set up an optical laboratory.
They were able to correct two significant problems presented by a pair of mirrors, coma and blur, as a result of blurred and distorted images. Due to the design of the optics lab and the limited space available, these mirrors had to be completely replaced with -f-axis parobolic mirrors, which were precisely polished to a width of 1/10 of the width of a human hair.
Snowfall then temporarily disrupted observations, but when Spain reopened in July, the first thing the Gregor team did was fire their upgraded telescope.
(KIS)
New first light images show the top of convection cells in solar granules, solar plasma. The middle of each granule is lighter; Hot plasma emerges from below. This plasma moves outwards as it cools, then falls back into the depths on the darker edge of each granule.
They look a bit like popcorn, but don’t be fooled – a typical granule is about 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) long, which is more than 10 percent of the Earth’s diameter.
Another image and video on 30 July 2020 shows a lone sunspot that raised the face of the sun. This is a temporary field where the sun’s magnetic field is particularly strong, which prevents activity on the sun’s normal surface; It appears darker on the surface of the sun because it is cooler than the material around it.
(KIS)
These sunspot regions are of intense interest to us, as these magnetic field lines are instantaneous, tangled and reconnected. It results in magnetic reconnection, releasing enormous amounts of energy, producing solar flares and coronal mass ejections – an event that could affect us here on Earth, disrupting satellite navigation and communications.
Daniel K. in Hawaii with a 30-kilometer resolution with the Big Bear Solar Observatory in the U.S. Images obtained from other high-resolution solar observatories, such as the Innoye Solar Telescope, Gregor and other high-resolution solar observatories, can help us better understand. The solar processes.
Also, we never tire of looking at mind-blowing images of our sun’s surface.
A paper describing the telescope upgrade has been published Astronomy and Astrophysics.
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