New photos released by Daniel K. Inoue solar telescope

The National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope has released eight new images of the Sun, showing off the exciting science going on at the world’s most powerful ground-based solar telescope. The images feature a variety of sunspots and quiet regions of the Sun obtained with the Visible-Broadband Imager (VBI), one of the telescope’s first-generation instruments.

The Inouye Solar Telescope’s unique ability to capture data in unprecedented detail will help solar scientists better understand The Sun’s magnetic field And the drivers behind the solar storms.

the sunspots The images are dark, cool regions on the “surface” of the Sun, known as the photosphere strong magnetic fields persist. Sunspots vary in size, but many are often the size of Earth, if not larger. Complex sunspots, or sunspot groups, can be the source of explosive events such as flares and flares Coronal mass ejection that generate solar storms. These energetic and explosive phenomena affect the sun’s outermost layer, the heliosphere, with the potential to affect Earth and our critical infrastructure.

In quiet regions of the Sun, images show convective cells in the photosphere displaying a bright pattern of hot, upward-flowing plasma (granules) surrounded by darker lanes of cooler, downward-flowing solar plasma. In the layer of the atmosphere above the photosphere, called the chromosphere, we see long, dark fibers arising from sites of small-scale magnetic field accumulations.

The recently opened telescope is in the Operational Operations Phase (OCP), a learning and transition period during which the observatory is slowly brought up to its full operational capabilities.

The international scientific community has been invited to participate in this phase by calling for a proposal for the Commissioning Operations Phase. In response to these calls, researchers have submitted science proposals requesting telescope time for a specific, detailed science goal. In order to improve scientific yield, while balancing available observational time and technical needs at this very early operational stage, the proposals were subsequently reviewed by the Proposal Review Committee and telescope The time was granted by the Telescope Allocation Committee. The specific offerings were implemented in 2022 during the first cycle operations window.

Newly released images make up a small portion of the data obtained from the first cycle. The Inouye Solar Telescope Data Center continues to calibrate and provide data to scientists and the public.

As the Inouye Solar Telescope continues to explore the Sun, we’re expecting many more exciting new findings from the scientific community – including stunning views of the most influential celestial bodies in our solar system.