Latest news with #MatthiasSchubert
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
25-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
World's largest solar telescope reveals unprecedented photo of the sun
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Weather on Earth can be wild, but it's not the only kind of weather we have to deal with. Space weather — all the winds and particles streaming off the sun — can have major impacts on Earth and human infrastructure. In the worst cases, this can mean dangerous disruption to our power grids and communications satellites. To help us predict these space storms, astronomers have a newly improved space weatherman — and it's the best one to date. The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), perched atop the Hawaiian mountain of Haleakalā, is the world's largest telescope used for studying the sun and predicting these storms. The team behind this technological marvel recently hit a major milestone, finally turning on one of DKIST's most powerful cameras — known as the Visible Tunable Filter, or VTF — after more than a decade working on its creation. This camera is the final piece of the puzzle for DKIST, and the VTF's addition "will complete its initial arsenal of scientific instruments," Carrie Black, director of the National Solar Observatory, said in a statement. "The significance of the technological achievement is such that one could easily argue the VTF is the Inouye Solar Telescope's heart, and it is finally beating at its forever place," Matthias Schubert, project scientist for the VTF, said in the statement. VTF's first image shows a major clump of sunspots, dark blobs on the sun's surface caused by its intense magnetic field, each blob measuring wider than the continental United States. This impressive camera can see details down to a resolution of about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) per pixel on the solar surface — an absolutely wild resolution given that the sun is tens of millions of miles away from us. Related: A mysterious, 100-year solar cycle may have just restarted — and it could mean decades of dangerous space weather VTF provides more than just a simple snapshot. It captures images at multiple wavelengths of light to measure a spectrum, while also gathering information on how the light's electric field is oriented (known as polarization). These extra perspectives on the sun help reveal details of the solar surface, magnetic field and plasma that are otherwise invisible, informing our predictions for space weather and solar flares. During just one observation of the sun, this instrument can collect more than 10 million spectra — graphs of the light's intensity over different wavelengths — which help scientists determine how hot the solar atmosphere is, how strong the sun's magnetic field is and more. RELATED STORIES —Has the sun already passed solar maximum? —NASA's daredevil solar spacecraft survives 2nd close flyby of our sun —Watch eerie 'UFOs' and a solar 'cyclone' take shape in stunning new ESA video of the sun Today's news is only the beginning for the VTF and DKIST. The incredibly complex instrument still requires more testing and set-up, which is expected to be completed by next year. But the newly released first images show great promise for how much we can learn about the sun, our nearest star. These images are "something no other instrument in the telescope can achieve in the same way," said National Solar Observatory optical engineer Stacey Sueoka. "I'm excited to see what's possible as we complete the system."
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.'
