New images of the Sun captured by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope are mesmerizing toe say the least. The sunspots that you see are dark and cool regions on the Sun’s “surface”, called the photosphere, where strong magnetic fields persist. They can vary in size, but many are often Earth-sized, if not larger.
Unlike the dark and cool areas, the quiet regions of the Sun show convection cells in the photosphere displaying a bright pattern of hot, upward-flowing plasma (granules) surrounded by darker lanes of cooler, down-flowing solar plasma. In the atmospheric layer above the photosphere, known as the chromosphere, you can see dark, elongated fibrils originating from locations of small-scale magnetic field accumulations.
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As the Inouye Solar Telescope continues to explore the Sun, we expect more new and exciting results from the scientific community – including spectacular views of our solar system’s most influential celestial body,” said Evan Pascual, National Solar Observatory Communications Officer.
