Sun Surface Images

The National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope on Maui has captured the highest-resolution images yet of the Sun’s photosphere, resolving structures smaller than 20 kilometers across. The images show narrow golden bands and whirlpool-like vortices in a magnetically active region near a sunspot. Researchers say the motions trace hot gas twisting and dragging the Sun’s magnetic field at the surface. The observations could help explain how magnetic field lines become tangled and reconnect, triggering solar flares, coronal mass ejections and geomagnetic effects on Earth.