Latest news with #InstituteforSolarPhysics
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
World's largest solar telescope gains powerful new 'eye' to study the sun's secrets
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The world's largest solar telescope has gained a powerful new "eye" that promises deeper views into the workings of our sun than ever before, scientists announced on Thursday (April 24). The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, which eyes the sun from its perch atop a mountain on the Hawaiian island of Maui, has been sending home stunningly detailed views of the surface of our star. The observatory, which is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, is designed to scrutinize the solar atmosphere and the sun's magnetic field for tiny features that might reveal answers to some of the fundamental solar mysteries. The telescope's already-sharp vision has now been boosted significantly thanks to a new instrument designed to maximize the information gleaned from the sun's light, scientists said on Thursday. "The instrument is, so to speak, the heart of the solar telescope, which is now finally beating at its final destination," Matthias Schubert, who is the project scientist for the instrument at the Institute for Solar Physics in Germany, said in a statement. The instrument, known as the Visible Tunable Filtergraph, or VTF, is the fifth and most powerful instrument to be added to the Inouye Solar Telescope. It is designed to study the regions of the sun where eruptions ignite — the visible surface, or photosphere, and the invisible layer above, known as chromosphere — with the highest level of precision of any solar observatory. The newly-installed VTF recently looked at the sun for the first time and, even in its ongoing technical test phase, is already delivering on its promise to resolve and image very fine details on the sun, scientists say. The image above features a sunspot on the sun's surface spanning a whopping 241 million square miles (625 million square kilometers), yet each pixel covers 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) on the sun's surface, according to the statement. Sophisticated computer processing during forthcoming science operations from VTF will sharpen the images even more and resolve even smaller structures on the sun, scientists say. Researchers at the Institute for Solar Physics in Germany have been developing VTF for the past 15 years, nearly the same duration as the Inouye Solar Telescope's own development. What makes the instrument so special is its ability to analyze sunlight in exceptional detail. VTF hosts two devices called interferometers that dissect sunlight into its fundamental components. Functioning as a sophisticated color and polarization filter, they select narrow slices of the sun's light spectrum to create hundreds of sharp images per second. The collected data helps scientists unravel the complex interplay between the hot plasma and magnetic fields that drive solar eruptions, according to the statement. RELATED STORIES: — See amazing new sun photos from the world's largest solar telescope — The largest solar telescope on Earth snaps the most detailed image of a sunspot we've ever seen — The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope: Getting a close-up look at our sun "VTF enables images of unprecedented quality and thus heralds a new era in ground-based solar observation," Sami Solanki, director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, which is a partner in the project, said in the statement. The Inouye Solar Telescope is designed to operate for 44 years, which should cover four of the sun's roughly 11-year solar cycles. And in that time, its suite of instruments will likely change. "The real power in the Inouye Solar Telescope is its flexibility, its upgradability," David Boboltz, the associate director for the Daniel Inouye Solar Telescope, previously said. "It's like having a Swiss Army Knife to study the sun."
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
World's largest solar telescope shows off its full force with new image
The record-breaking Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) has captured another stunningly close look at the surface of our sun. DKIST has collected incredibly detailed images of the sun from its perch on the Haleakalā volcano in Maui since 2022, but the largest observational tool of its kind only managed its latest look thanks to a recent major milestone described as its 'technical first light.' Using its newly installed spectro-polarimeter visible tuner filter (VTF), DKIST has offered a stunningly close look at the sun's surface photosphere featuring a gigantic sunspot. 'The instrument is, so to speak, the heart of the solar telescope, which is now finally beating at its final destination,' VTF project scientist Matthias Schubert said in a statement. VTF's primary goal is to image the sun at the absolute highest spatial, spectral, and temporal resolutions possible. Doing so will help experts gain a better understanding of the sun's dynamic and complex behaviors, particularly the powerful particles, solar energy, and stellar radiation it ejects across the solar system. These solar storms routinely produce colorful atmospheric auroras on Earth, but especially intense events can wreak havoc on satellites and global communications systems. Studying the sun's photosphere and chromosphere will allow researchers to examine how plasma flows and shifting magnetic fields interact to trigger surface eruptions. DKIST's VTF is specifically designed to help determine attributes like magnetic field strength, temperature, pressure, and plasma flow velocity. It is a massive addition to what is already a giant observational installation. At around the size of a small garage, the 5.6 ton instrument occupies two floors at the National Solar Observatory. The VTF was developed and constructed at Germany's Institute for Solar Physics over the last 15 years—nearly as long as the time spent on DKIST itself. The painstaking installation process began at the beginning of 2024, and took months of work to complete before it could be utilized for the first time. VTF's first public image also showcases one of our star's ever-changing sunspots, which are linked to comparatively strong magnetic fields that prevent plasma from escaping the star's interior. To record the event, the VTF relied on sunlight with a wavelength of 588.9 nanometers, and also depicts the sunspot's penumbra over a region measuring approximately 15,535-square-miles. 'The Inouye Solar Telescope was designed to study the underlying physics of the Sun as the driver of space weather,' said Christoph Keller, Director of the National Solar Observatory, which is responsible for operating DKIST. 'In pursuing this goal, the Inouye is an ideal platform for an unprecedented and pioneering instrument like the VTF.'
Forbes
24-04-2025
- Science
- Forbes
See The Jaw-Dropping New Image Of Planet-Sized Spot On The Sun
A narrow-band image of the sun from the Inouye Solar Telescope. Each pixel in the original version ... More of the image corresponds to 6.2 miles 1(0 kilometers) on the sun. The world's largest solar telescope on top of the Haleakala volcano in Hawaii has used a new instrument that took 15 years to build to produce a spectacular first image of the sun. The new test image, above, reveals a cluster of sunspots covering 241 million square miles of the sun's surface, with each pixel representing 6.2 miles (10 kilometers), though the new instrument won't be used regularly for science until next year. It's hoped that it will help solar physicists uncover the underlying physics of the sun and how it drives space weather — which brings northern lights but also threatens infrastructure on Earth, ages satellites and can even harm astronauts. Magnetic disturbances on the sun's surface that can be as big as Earth — as is the case here — sunspots are critical to solar scientists. Solar flares and coronal mass ejections originate in sunspots. Solar flares are intense blasts of radiation that travel at light speed, while CMEs are vast clouds of charged particles that travel more slowly but are a major cause of geomagnetic storms on Earth — which often spark displays of the northern and southern lights. This new image comes from an instrument called the Visible Tunable Filter, which has recently been installed on the U.S. National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope on Haleakala. The largest of its type, the VTF captures sunlight signals over a narrow range of frequencies, allowing it to map specific phenomena — such as magnetic fields, solar flares and plasma — at new levels of detail. It can scan different wavelengths and take hundreds of images a second using three cameras, combining the data to produce 3D views of the sun. The VTF was built by scientists at the Institute for Solar Physics in Freiburg, Germany. Solar scientists need to understand what causes geomagnetic disturbances on Earth so they can predict them. 'When powerful solar storms hit Earth, they impact critical infrastructure across the globe and in space," said Carrie Black, NSF program director for the NSF National Solar Observatory. "High-resolution observations of the sun are necessary to improve predictions of such damaging storms." It just so happens that VTF is being debuted just as the sun reaches "solar maximum," the peak of the 11-year solar cycle when its magnetic activity intensifies. It's thought that the solar maximum occurred in October 2024, according to scientists at NOAA and NASA, though the tail of the peak can often bring with it intense magnetic activity. Sunspots on the solar surface — which can be seen by anyone using a pair of solar eclipse glasses — are counted each day by solar scientists, with the number of sunspots indicating how magnetically active the sun is. It's hoped that that with the VTF, the Inouye Solar Telescope will be able to precisely study the regions of the sun where solar flares and CMEs come from, and allow them to unpick the complex interaction of hot plasma flows and changing magnetic fields. 'VTF enables images of unprecedented quality and thus heralds a new era in ground-based solar observation,' said Sami K. Solanki, director at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen,Germany. Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
