Latest news with #SolarTelescope
Forbes
05-05-2025
- Science
- Forbes
In Photos: Giant Sunspot Appears On The Sun — How To Safely See It
A giant black spot has appeared on the sun's disk — and you'll need to go find an old pair of solar eclipse glasses to safely see it with your own eyes. At over 87,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) wide, the sunspot — called AR 4079 by solar scientists who track the sun each day — is the largest of 2025 so far. Earth's diameter is 7,926 miles (12,756 kilometers). The sun only occupies half a degree of the sky, so trying to find it while wearing solar eclipse glasses is not easy. Here's how to see the sunspot: Note: it is dangerous to look at the sun through anything other than a pair of certified safe solar filters (solar eclipse glasses) bearing the ISO 12312-2 international safety standard. Don't make your own, don't use sunglasses and don't use welder's glass (sometimes the latter is safe, but only if it's Grade 13 or 14, which is hard to check). The American Astronomical Society keeps a list of Suppliers of Safe Solar Filters & Viewers. A sunspot is a magnetic disturbance on the sun's surface. Appearing on the sun's visible surface — called the photosphere — they're cooler regions on the sun caused by a concentration of magnetic field lines, according to NASA. The "AR" in a sunspot's name stands for active region because sunspots are areas of intense and complex magnetic fields and the source of solar eruptions — solar flares and coronal mass ejections. 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. CMEs are frequently the root cause of displays of the northern and southern lights. In the wake of last May 10-11's displays of aurora — the most intense since 2003, according to NASA — scientists announced the arrival of the solar maximum period. However, there is a good chance of an extended period of solar activity through 2025. The number of sunspots wax and wane according to where the sun is in its solar cycle, which is, on average, 11 years long. The sun is currently at solar maximum, meaning the sunspots are bigger and more numerous than usual. AR 4079 is about half the size of the sunspot seen during the "Carrington Event" in early September 1859. The landmark solar event saw astronomer Richard C. Carrington observe the most powerful solar flare ever recorded, which later created auroras down to the tropics. The giant sunspot comes days after the world's largest solar telescope published its first spectacular image of the sun. A new instrument on the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Haleakala, Hawaii, captures sunlight signals over a narrow range of frequencies, allowing it to map magnetic fields, solar flares and plasma at new levels of detail. Its new image revealed a cluster of sunspots covering 241 million square miles of the sun's surface. Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
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.'
