Solar telescope on Haleakalā captures photo voltaic flare in unprecedented element : Maui Now

Astronomers utilizing the Daniel Okay. Inouye Solar Telescope on Maui have captured among the most detailed pictures ever taken of a photo voltaic flare, revealing razor-thin magnetic loops that would remodel how scientists perceive and predict photo voltaic storms.

The observations, recorded Aug. 8, 2024, through the decay of an X1.3-class flare, confirmed darkish coronal loop strands with unprecedented readability. The loops averaged 48.2 kilometers in width. Some have been as skinny as 21 kilometers—about one-fifth the size of Maui and the smallest coronal loops ever imaged. 

“Before Inouye, we could only imagine what this scale looked like,” stated Cole Tamburri, a University of Colorado Boulder Ph.D. and lead writer of the research. “Now we can see it directly. These are the smallest coronal loops ever imaged on the Sun.”

Coronal loops are arcs of superheated plasma that hint the Sun’s magnetic area strains. When these magnetic fields twist and snap, they launch large bursts of vitality within the type of photo voltaic flares and storms — occasions that may disrupt satellites, communications and energy grids on Earth.

By tuning the telescope’s Visible Broadband Imager to the H-alpha wavelength (656.28 nm), astronomers have been in a position to isolate mild emitted by hydrogen atoms within the decrease photo voltaic ambiance. The pictures resolve options as small as 24 kilometers — a stage of element greater than twice that of the next-best photo voltaic telescope, in accordance with researchers.

“It’s like going from seeing a forest to suddenly seeing every single tree,” Tamburri stated. The scientists additionally credited the extent of readability to excellent observing circumstances.

It was additionally the primary time the Inouye Solar Telescope has ever noticed an X-class flare.

Originally, the staff got down to research chromospheric spectral line dynamics utilizing the telescope’s Visible Spectropolarimeter. But the Visible Broadband Imager delivered the surprising treasure: ultra-fine coronal constructions that would instantly inform superior flare fashions.

“We went in looking for one thing and stumbled across something even more intriguing,” stated NSO scientist and research co-author Maria Kazachenko.

The findings verify long-standing theories that coronal loops might be as slender as 10 to 100 kilometers, and researchers imagine they could have imaged the Sun’s elementary magnetic constructing blocks for the primary time.

“We’re finally peering into the spatial scales we’ve been speculating about for years,” Tamburri stated. “This opens the door to studying not just their size, but their shapes, their evolution and even the scales where magnetic reconnection—the engine behind flares—occurs.”

The analysis staff included scientists from the National Solar Observatory, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

Their research, “Unveiling Unprecedented Fine Structure in Coronal Flare Loops with the DKIST,” was published Monday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The Daniel Okay. Inouye Solar Telescope — the world’s largest photo voltaic telescope — is operated on Haleakalā by the National Solar Observatory underneath the National Science Foundation.