The photo displays a sunspot larger than Earth in unprecedented detail

The stunning new image of the enormous dark spot on the sun looks like a heart or a flaming flower.

Sunspots – where strong magnetic fields meet boiling hot gases from the inside – are about 10,000 miles across. Inside the earth is as wide as a little wiggle room.

The world’s largest solar observatory, Daniel K. Maui of the island of Hawaii captured the event in unprecedented detail on Jan. 28 on the Inouye Solar Telescope. The National Science Foundation, which owns the telescope, presented the image and a video of the sunspot. Friday.

Thomas Rimmel, associate director of the National Solar Observatory of the NSF, which operates the telescope, said, “Showing a magnetic structure as small as 20 kilometers above the surface of the sun, the image of the sunspot achieves 2.5 times higher spatial resolution than before.”

Sunspots form in areas where the sun’s magnetic field is so powerful that it reduces atmospheric pressure, which in turn lowers the temperature. In this case, the dark spot freezing is 7,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

Flower-petal-like streams bursting from a dark space come from the interaction between magnetic fields and hot gases rising from below the surface.

This rolling action is visible in the video clip below. It captures real-time solar activity of about two seconds minutes, compressed in just four seconds. The frame is around 12,000 miles.

Inoue can help predict violent explosions on the sun

The Inoi Telescope was flooded when its first observations were released in January. Although the telescope was not yet complete, its first images of the sun were clearer than any previous telescope.

This powerful lens will help scientists unravel the mysteries of space weather and also predict solar events that could be dangerous to humans.

This is because the entire solar system sits in the outer reach of the Sun’s atmosphere. The magnetic, electrically charged particles from the sun constantly wash over the planets in a stream called the solar wind. This magnetic flux creates an aurora as it interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere. But violent explosions on the sun send waves of electrically charged particles that damage critical technology.

Using Inoy to study the dynamics of these events, scientists can begin to predict them.

Inoue can also help solve a big mystery: since the Sun’s corona is 500 times hotter than its surface. Astronomers have been struggling to understand this phenomenon since the 1940s.

Construction on the telescope was due to be completed in June this year, but the epidemic pushed it back to 2021.

“The launch of the telescope operation has been slightly delayed due to the effects of the Covid-19 global epidemic,” David Boboltez, NSF’s program director for Inoi, said in the release.

But he added that “this image represents an initial preview of unprecedented capabilities that will bring to our understanding of the feature sun.”