Astronomers have investigated the Sun for many years already. However, it is just recently that they were able to get up close and personal with the star at the center of our solar system.
The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope of the National Science Foundation released initial images of the Sun, not just unveiling the Sun in unprecedented detail but also helping scientists peer into the mechanics behind the star's unpredictable space weather.
Inverse reported that the telescope yielded the highest-resolution footages of the surface of the Sun, unveiling the detail of "cell-like structures of hot gas covering the whole surface."
Each of these structures, similar to cells, is about the same size as Texas, and the dark borders surrounding them serve as the markers of the magnetic field of the sun.
Each of these cell-like structures are about the size of Texas, and the dark borders around them are the markers of the Sun's magnetic field.
Hot Gas Patterns Revealed
Essentially, according to the Inverse report, hot plasma explodes from the center and cools off as it "spills over to the sides" before it sinks underneath the surface in an uninterrupted process that transmits energy, also called convection.
The imageries expose hot gas patterns in plasma form, violently moving across the surface of the Sun. More so, the patterns are made up of small explosions, creating a hypnotic dance for burning plasma.
Beautifully, these structures that look like cells are also said to be one of the driving powers behind space weather.
The Sun sporadically emits boiling-hot plasma in solar flares, and solar wind forms across Solar System. Such emissions result in magnetic storms in the upper atmosphere of the Earth, which can have major impacts on the power grids on this planet, as well as astronauts and spacecraft.
Eventually, forecasting between weather events will identify the future of exploration of human space, as well.
However, until at present, scientists have not been able to forecast space weather as it explodes from the Sun completely. To handle that, they need to understand further the mechanism used behind the magnetic field of the Sun.
Sun as a Giant Ball of Plasma
Forbes describes Sun as "a giant ball of plasma," which consists mostly of hydrogen and helium with a small amount of other elements.
Both the pressures and temperatures of the Sun are quite great in the core, except that, that the hydrogen is fusing into helium emitting energy.
Nevertheless, the surface of the sun that sits millions of millions of kilometers away from the core is exposed to space's cold hard, unyielding vacuum itself.
How the Inouye Solar Telescope Works
According to the National Science Foundation's National Solar Observatory Director, Valentin Pillet, the Inouye Solar Telescope will deliver remote sensing of the Sun's outer layers, as well as the magnetic processes that take place in them.
Such processes, the director explained, proliferate into the Solar System "where the Parker Solar Probe and the Solar Orbiter missions" will have their consequences measured.
All in all, Pillet continued, they establish a "genuinely multi-messenger undertaking" to further understand how stars, as well as their planets, are magnetically linked.
Interestingly, such images are only the beginning of the work of the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope. In its initial five years of operation, the said telescope is set to transform or modernize the understanding of the Sun. It would offer science experts with data to investigate said host star.
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