Solar golden nuggets: a closer look at our star

Behold the most detailed view ever of the Sun’s surface. This stunning shot was captured a few weeks ago by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) in Hawaii to celebrate its entrance into the world – and what an entrance!

The image shows convection cells on the surface of our star. Each is about the size of a country like Spain. The smallest details visible are just 30km across, on an object located 150 million kilometres away!

SKAO Director of Programme Dr Joe McMullin was Project Manager and Deputy Director of DKIST before joining SKAO. We asked him to comment.

“People might not realise this but getting that First Light with such spectacular resolution and without burning anything was no small feat. There’s a heatstop at the focus that removes more than 95% of the heat from the system. It’s cooled using a high flow of a special coolant called dynalene, which allows it to absorb most of the 12 kilowatts of energy focused by the 4m primary mirror.”

Looking at the image and what it means, Joe says: “It’s the years of effort and planning. I’m so proud of everyone involved and proud to have been a part of it all.”

The SKA will also study our star, so we asked NCRA’s Divya Oberoi, co-chair of the SKA’s Solar, Heliospheric & Ionospheric Physics Science Working Group how this new telescope fits in.

“Understanding solar magnetic fields is key to understanding the Sun,” he told us. “The excellent imaging quality of DKIST will provide an unprecedented ability to study magnetic fields not only in the corona – the Sun’s outer atmosphere, but also in the chromosphere – the layer immediately underneath it.

“Even though they operate in very different parts of the spectrum, together SKA & DKIST will explore very complementary aspects of the Sun, allowing us to understand long-standing problems, such as the physics behind solar flares and how the corona can reach temperatures of 2 million degrees Celsius.”

Located atop the 3,000m Mount Haleakala – meaning ‘House of the Sun’ in native Hawaiian – the newly inaugurated DKIST is now the most powerful solar telescope in the world. Like the photo?

The image shows convection cells on the surface of our star. Each is about the size of a country like Spain. The smallest details visible are just 30km across, on an object located 150 million kilometres away!

Credit: NSO/NSF/AURA