Astronomers operating the Inouye solar telescope in Hawaii have obtained the highest resolution images of the sun’s surface to date, revealing features smaller than 20 kilometers across in a magnetically active region. The detailed observations show golden bands and swirling vortices that represent previously unseen structures on the sun.
The small whirlpool-like formations identified in the images are signatures of Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, or KHIs. These phenomena form when fast-moving plasma slides past slower-moving fluid, creating shear that generates disturbances which develop into spiraling vortices. While KHIs have been observed in Earth’s lakes, oceans, and cloud formations as well as in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, their confirmation on the sun represents a significant discovery. The findings appear in the journal Nature.
The discovery may address a long-standing puzzle in solar physics regarding the extreme temperature differential between the sun’s surface and its corona, the outer atmosphere. The sun’s surface reaches approximately 6,000 degrees Celsius, while the corona reaches temperatures of several million degrees. According to research team members, the identified instabilities could explain how magnetic field lines become twisted and braided, which would trigger the explosive events that heat the corona.
The magnetic fields driving solar phenomena such as flares, jets, and coronal mass ejections are generated by the movement of hot, charged plasma within the sun. When magnetic field lines become tangled, the resulting tension can be suddenly released, causing explosive events that impact Earth through disruptions to power grids, satellites, and communications systems. The newly observed instabilities provide insight into what initiates this twisting process and how energy cascades into smaller scales before dissipating as heat, potentially solving a central mystery in solar and astrophysics research.
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