Latest news with #NationalSolarObservatory
NDTV
a day ago
- Science
- NDTV
Sharpest Solar Images Ever: Pink 'Raindrops' On The Sun Captured In Unprecedented Detail
Advanced ground-based telescopes use adaptive optics (AO) to produce sharp images by correcting atmospheric distortion, capturing stunning views of planets, stars, and celestial objects. Recently, a team at the National Solar Observatory applied AO technology to study the Sun's corona in remarkable detail, as per Science Alert. The corona, the Sun's outermost layer, stretches millions of kilometres into space and is mysteriously hotter than the underlying photosphere, a phenomenon known as the 'coronal heating problem.' This region is governed by powerful magnetic fields and is the source of coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which can interact with Earth's magnetosphere, triggering auroras and geomagnetic storms. Observing the Sun's corona is challenging due to its dimness compared to the Sun's surface. Typically, it's visible during total solar eclipses or through space-based coronagraphs that mimic an eclipse. However, researchers have now used Adaptive Optics (AO) to study the corona from Earth. AO employs computer-controlled, deformable mirrors to counteract atmospheric interference, producing clear images. A team from the National Solar Observatory and the New Jersey Institute of Technology developed an AO system for the 1.6-meter Goode Solar Telescope, enabling precise observations of the corona's fine structure. "Resolving fine structures in the Sun's corona may provide key insights into rapid eruptions and the heating of the corona," the authors write in their research article. Here we present observations with coronal adaptive optics reaching the diffraction limit of a 1.6-m telescope to reveal very fine coronal details," the authors wrote in a paper titled Observations of fine coronal structures with high-order solar adaptive optics. Solar prominences, loops, and rain are all composed of plasma, and understanding these phenomena requires observing their fine details. Key questions remain unanswered, such as how plasma in the corona is heated to millions of kelvins when the Sun's surface is only 6,000 K, and what triggers eruptions. "The turbulence in the air severely degrades images of objects in space, like our Sun, seen through our telescopes. But we can correct for that. It is super exciting to build an instrument that shows us the Sun like never before," Dirk Schmidt, NSO Adaptive Optics Scientist, who led the development, said in a press release. This video captures a dynamic prominence featuring a large-scale twist and cascading coronal rain. Coronal rain occurs when strands of coronal plasma cool and descend back to the Sun's surface. "Raindrops in the Sun's corona can be narrower than 20 kilometres. These findings offer new, invaluable observational insight that is vital to test computer models of coronal processes," said NSO Astronomer Thomas Schad. " Another video displays a dense, cool quiescent prominence with intricate internal flows. The next video showcases post-flare coronal rain, where plasma strands, guided by the Sun's magnetic field lines, cascade along curved paths rather than straight lines. These images, captured at the highest resolution ever achieved, reveal unprecedented details of this phenomenon. Solar telescopes using adaptive optics (AO) have historically detailed the Sun's surface with 1,000 km precision but struggled to image the corona. The new coronal AO system, developed with contributions from NSO Chief Technologist Thomas Rimmele, achieves 63 km resolution, the theoretical limit of the 1.6-meter Goode Solar Telescope. Described as transformative by NJIT's Philip Goode, this technology enhances resolution tenfold, revolutionising solar science. "With coronal adaptive optics now in operation, this marks the beginning of a new era in solar physics, promising many more discoveries in the years and decades to come," said Mr Goode.
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
Space photo of the week: Pink 'raindrops' on the sun captured in greatest detail ever
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Quick facts What it is: The sun's corona Where it is: The outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere. When it was shared: May 27, 2025 Solar "raindrops" — plasma streams and vast arches extending outward from the sun's surface and into the corona, the outermost part of the solar atmosphere — have been captured in spectacular new detail by a ground-based telescope in California. Among the images taken from time-lapse movies, which utilize new technology to eliminate blurring caused by Earth's atmosphere, is coronal rain, a phenomenon that occurs when cooling plasma condenses and falls back toward the sun's surface along magnetic field lines. Other features imaged include prominences — the term solar physicists use to describe the arches and loops — and finely structured plasma streams. The images are artificially colorized from the hydrogen-alpha light captured by the telescope, making them appear pink. The remarkable images, taken by researchers from the U.S. National Science Foundation's National Solar Observatory and New Jersey Institute of Technology, were published this week in a paper in the journal Nature. "These are by far the most detailed observations of this kind, showing features not previously observed, and it's not quite clear what they are," Vasyl Yurchyshyn, co-author of the study and a research professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, said in a statement. The researchers captured the new images using the 1.6-meter Goode Solar Telescope at the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) in California, equipped with a new technology called Cona, which employs a laser to correct for turbulence in Earth's upper atmosphere. Related: NASA spacecraft snaps eerie image of eclipsed sun with an extra moon overhead. What's going on? Cona is "like a pumped-up autofocus" for the sky, Nicolas Gorceix, chief observer at BBSO, said in the statement. It's a form of adaptive optics that works by measuring, and then adapting in real-time to, atmospheric distortions, reshaping a special mirror 2,200 times per second. Turbulence in Earth's upper atmosphere has always been a limiting factor when studying the sun, but Cona increases the resolution of what can be observed, from features over 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) wide to just 63 km (39 miles). SEE MORE SPACE PHOTOS —Violent galaxies seen 'jousting' near the dawn of time —Cotton candy clouds shine in one of Hubble's most beautiful images ever —Bizarre 1-armed spiral galaxy stuns Hubble scientists The sun's corona, which means crown, is one of the most mysterious places in the solar system. This outer layer of the sun's atmosphere is blocked from view by the brighter photosphere — the sun's surface — and is only visible briefly to the naked eye during a total solar eclipse. That also applies to prominences, which can be seen during totality as reddish-pink arches and loops. Despite its tenuous nature, the corona is millions of degrees hotter than the photosphere. It's of critical interest to solar scientists because it's in the corona that the solar wind originates. This constant stream of charged particles then radiates throughout the solar system, interacting with planetary atmospheres (including Earth's) to cause geomagnetic storms and auroras. Following the successful test of Cona, plans are underway to install it on the 4-meter Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Maui, Hawaii, the world's largest solar telescope.
Gizmodo
6 days ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
Telescope Upgrade Reveals Sun's ‘Coronal Rain' in Unprecedented Detail
A powerful new optics system has captured the clearest view yet of the Sun's corona, revealing stunning plasma structures. The Sun's outer atmosphere—the corona—is the piping hot outer limit of our star, and is usually hidden from view except during rare total eclipses. Now, scientists have gotten their clearest look ever at this mysterious region, thanks to a new adaptive optics system that scrubs away atmospheric blur, revealing fine views of the wispy plasma on the star's surface. Researchers from the National Solar Observatory and New Jersey Institute of Technology unveiled the system today, along with dazzling new images and videos of the Sun's corona. The findings, published in Nature Astronomy, show fine-scale structures in solar prominences, short-lived plasma jets called spicules, and even coronal rain: cooling plasma that falls back to the solar surface along the star's magnetic field lines. The team's imaging breakthrough hinges on a technology called coronal adaptive optics. Installed on the 5.25-foot (1.6-meter) Goode Solar Telescope in California, the new system—nicknamed 'Cona'—adjusts a mirror 2,200 times per second to correct for distortions caused by the churn of Earth's atmosphere. The remarkable technology counterbalances any would-be wobble in the telescope, thereby producing particularly sharp images of the corona. 'This technological advancement is a game-changer,' said Dirk Schmidt, an adaptive optics scientist at NSO and the study's lead author, in an observatory release. 'There is a lot to discover when you boost your resolution by a factor of 10.' Until now, solar telescopes have used adaptive optics mainly to study the Sun's surface, the release stated. Observing the fainter corona has remained a challenge, with coronal features blurred to scales of 621 miles (1,000 kilometers)—a limit that's existed for 80 years. But Cona now resolves features down to just 39 miles (63 km), the theoretical limit of the Goode telescope. Among the new footage captured by the team are shots of a twisting solar prominence reshaping in real time, spicules flickering on the surface, and fine, hair-like strands of coronal rain narrower than 12.5 miles (20 km). When you consider how far the Sun is from Earth, how faint the corona is relative to the rest of the star, and how much of Earth's turbulent atmosphere the team had to cut through and correct for, the sharpness of the images is a triumph. 'This transformative technology, which is likely to be adopted at observatories world-wide, is poised to reshape ground-based solar astronomy,' said study co-author Philip Goode, a physicist at NJIT-CSTR, in the same release. 'With coronal adaptive optics now in operation, this marks the beginning of a new era in solar physics, promising many more discoveries in the years and decades to come.' The observations offer crucial data for unraveling enduring solar mysteries—like why the corona is millions of degrees hotter than the solar surface. The team plans to bring the coronal adaptive optics technology to the 13-foot (4-meter) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaiʻi—potentially revealing even smaller details of the Sun's atmosphere.
The Hindu
01-05-2025
- Science
- The Hindu
IIA researchers chart the Sun's subsurface weather
An international team of solar physicists led by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) have traced giant tides of plasma beneath the Sun's surface at a region called near-surface shear layer (NSSL). According to a study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the plasma's currents shift with the Sun's magnetic heartbeat and could have a far-reaching influence on space weather and earth. 'The near-surface shear layer (NSSL) extending to about 35,000 km in depth is a critical region beneath the Sun's surface. It is marked by distinct rotational behaviours that vary with depth and changes, over space and time, that relate to active region magnetic fields and the solar cycle,' said the Department of Science and Technology. It added that astronomers have probed the dynamic inner weather of the Sun — plasma currents just beneath its surface at the NSSL, that pulse in step with its 11-year sunspot cycle. Apart from IIA, researchers from Stanford University (USA), and the National Solar Observatory (NSO, USA) have traced how these hidden flows shift over time, potentially reshaping our understanding of solar dynamics in general and how the Sun's interior connects to its outer magnetic behaviour in particular. Employing helioseismology — an advanced technique that tracks sound waves as they travel through the Sun — the team observed changes in the movement of solar material using more than a decade of data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory/Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (SDO/HMI) and the ground-based Global Oscillations Network Group (GONG) of National Solar Observatory (NSO), USA. Fascinating patterns The analysis led by Professor S.P. Rajaguru and PhD student Anisha Sen from IIA revealed fascinating patterns — surface plasma flows converge toward active sunspot latitudes, but reverse direction midway through the NSSL, flowing outward to form circulation cells. 'These flows are strongly influenced by the Sun's rotation and the Coriolis force — the same force responsible for the spin of hurricanes on earth,' the department said. 'To validate our findings, we zoomed in on a massive sunspot region using 3D velocity maps. The localised flow patterns we observed matched the global trends — confirming both surface inflows and deeper outflows,' said lead author Anisha Sen. These findings give us a better understanding of how the Sun's magnetic activity is linked to its internal flows and hint that we might still be missing something lurking in deeper layers that truly drives its global dynamics.
See - Sada Elbalad
25-04-2025
- Science
- See - Sada Elbalad
World's Largest Solar Telescope Captures New Photo for Solar Activity
Rana Atef On Thursday, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) scientists, which is the world's largest telescope for studying solar activity, developed the Visible Tunable Filter (VTF) to study the solar storms. This camera of VTF's addition "will complete its initial arsenal of scientific instruments," according to Carrie Black, director of the National Solar Observatory. Matthias Schubert, project scientist, explained: "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." The first image from the Inouye telescope's Visible Tunable Filter (VTF) camera shows a sunspot cluster many times larger than North America. It shows a major clump of sunspots, dark blobs on the sun's surface caused by its intense magnetic field. read more UAE's Lunar Mission Delayed to Tomorrow Twitter Lifts Trump's Account Ban Scientists Find Evidence Of 10،000 Black Holes Surrounding The Center Of The Milky Way Galaxy Greenhouse In Antarctica Able To Grow Vegetables Without Soil Or Sunlight Moving Over China: U.S. Is Again Home to World's Speediest Supercomputer Technology The 10 most expensive cars in the world Technology Top 10 fastest cars in the world Technology Lasers Could Make Computers 1 Million Times Faster Technology Smart technology taking control of our lives News Egypt confirms denial of airspace access to US B-52 bombers News Ayat Khaddoura's Final Video Captures Bombardment of Beit Lahia Lifestyle Pistachio and Raspberry Cheesecake Domes Recipe News Australia Fines Telegram $600,000 Over Terrorism, Child Abuse Content Arts & Culture Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's $4.7M LA Home Burglarized Videos & Features Bouchra Dahlab Crowned Miss Arab World 2025 .. Reem Ganzoury Wins Miss Arab Africa Title (VIDEO) Sports Former Al Zamalek Player Ibrahim Shika Passes away after Long Battle with Cancer Sports Neymar Announced for Brazil's Preliminary List for 2026 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers News Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly Inaugurates Two Indian Companies Arts & Culture New Archaeological Discovery from 26th Dynasty Uncovered in Karnak Temple
