Largest solar telescope in the world reveals unpublished details of the sun

A new image of the sun captured by the world’s largest solar telescope shows the surface of our nearest star with unprecedented details, and reveals its burning complexity.

The image is the first taken by the New Visible Tuning Filter (VTF) of solar telescope Daniel K. Inouye of the National Science Foundation of the United States. The instrument can build a three -dimensional view closer to what is happening on the surface of the sun, according to a press release.

The approximation reveals a cluster of dark sunscreens in the size of continents near the center of the inner atmosphere of the sun, on a scale of 10 kilometers per pixel. These spots mark areas of intense magnetic activity, where solar explosions and coronal mass ejections are likely to occur.

Coronal mass ejections are large clouds of ionized gas called plasma and magnetic fields that break out of the outer atmosphere of the sun. Detailed images like this, taken in early December, represent an important way for Scientists learn about and predict the solar climate Potentially dangerous, said Friedrich Woeger, scientist of the solar telescope instrument program NSF Inouye in an email.

“A solar storm in the 1800s (the Carrington event) was so energetic that it allegedly caused fires in telegraphic stations,” said Woeger. “We need to understand the physical factors of these phenomena and how they can affect our technology and ultimately our lives.”

These sun’s energy explosions can interact with the electromagnetic field of our planet, causing disturbances in essential infrastructure such as electricity networks and satellite -powered communication networks, he explained.

The sun goes through periods of high and low magnetic activity in an 11 -year cycle. In October, scientists from the oceanic and atmospheric national administration, NASA and the solar cycle’s international forecast panel announced that the sun reached the peak of activity, called the solar maximum. During the peak, the magnetic poles of the sun are reversed and more solar spots appear on its surface.

It is expected that the maximum will last several months, so it is an appropriate time for the solar telescope Inouye to intensify your instrument tests with spectacular images of the dynamic surface of the sun.

Like a boiling soup on the stove, the heat escapes the sun’s core and rises to its surface through fluid movements, said Mark Miesch, a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Environmental Sciences Research at Colorado Boulder. Miesch was not involved in the research.

Solar spots, then, are like “magnetic plugs”, or tangled in the complex star’s magnetic fields that prevent heat from reaching the surface, Miesch said. For this reason, solar spots, which emit less light than other areas of the sun, appear darter in the images and are colder than their surroundings. However, solar spots are still “warmer than any oven on earth,” he added.

The apparent texture of the sun comes from different densities and temperatures within its surface, which has layers similar to an onion. By “tuning” different wavelengths, or colors, such as a radio tuner, the VTF offers a way to probe these various layers and observe what is happening between them, Miesch said.

In other words, while an image of a personal camera uses light containing multiple wavelengths at the same time, the VTF, a type of image spectrum, filters measurable wave lengths one by one. To perform this filtration, the instrument uses a etalon – two glass plates separated by mere microns.

“The principle is no different from that of noise cancellation headphones: when two similar wave (s) waves (s) travel in the same way or in a cross path, they can interact with each other to cancel or reinforce,” said Woeger. “The ‘prey’ light waves between these two plates interfere, and the distance between the plates selects which ‘exact colors’ of light are transmitted and which are canceled.”

In just a few seconds, the powerful instrument captures hundreds of images through different filters and combines them in an instant three -dimensional image. Researchers can then use the resulting views to study the temperature, pressure, speed and structure of the magnetic field in different layers of the solar atmosphere. “Seeing those first spectral scanning was a surreal moment. This is something that no other instrument in the telescope can reach the same way,” said Stacey Sueoka, senior optical engineer of the National Solar Observatory in a statement.

The image spectrum image represents the apex of more than a decade of development. Located at the NSF National Solar Observatory, at the top of the Haleakalā volcano, 3,000 meters in Maui, the VTF extends several floors of the solar Inouye telescope. After the VTF was designed and built by the Institute of Solar Physics in Germany, the parts of the instrument were transported by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and then reassembled – like a “ship in a bottle,” Woeger said.

What he really captured solved a solar mystery. “The importance of technological conquest is such that one could easily argue that the VTF is the heart of the solar Inouye telescope, and is finally hitting its definitive place,” said Matthias Schubert, a scientist at the VTF project at the Institute of Solar Physics in a statement.

The solar telescope is among several other recent scientists’ efforts to better understand the sun and its stormy climate patterns, including Solar Orbiter, a joint mission of the European and NASA space agency launched in 2020, and NASA’s solar parker probe, the first spacecraft to “touch” the sun.

See everything you know about NASA’s mission that will “play the sun”

This content was originally published in the largest solar telescope in the world reveals unpublished details of the sun on the CNN Brazil website.

Source: CNN Brasil