The sharpest images of the sun to date reveal new discoveries about its surface
The finding, known as Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, is a turning point for understanding how this celestial body works
The scientific community is once again surprising with an unprecedented discovery about the main star of our planetary system. The scientific journal Nature published this Wednesday the sharpest images of the sun ever taken, which have allowed the observation of a phenomenon unknown until now. Specifically, the photos reveal that on the surface of this star there are small vortices that, collectively, form swirling patterns reminiscent of the night sky in Vincent van Gogh's painting The Starry Night.
According to the study, they would be superheated solar gases at very high temperatures with diameters ranging from 19 km to 170 km, produced by a process known as Kelvin-Helmholtz instability waves (KHI). KHI occurs when two parallel streams of gases or fluids interact while moving at different speeds. This phenomenon was described in the 19th century and, although it has now been detected on the surface of the sun, it has also been observed in clouds when two layers of air of different densities, moving at different speeds, meet one above the other and do not mix.
Friedrich Wöger, lead co-author of the study, an astronomer and scientist with the Inouye telescope's instrument program, however, told Reuters that the main difference between this phenomenon observed on Earth and on the sun is that on the surface of this star "the two interacting fluids are hot plasma – between about 6,000 Kelvin – moving within a magnetic field that helps create the conditions for instability to develop".
To capture this unique solar finding, astronomers used the world's largest solar telescope, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope of the U.S. National Science Foundation located on the Hawaiian island of Maui.
Rethinking the system
Wöger has described this discovery as a "turning point", as it opens the door to new methods and knowledge to understand how the sun expels energy into the atmosphere. Furthermore, the study's co-author and astronomer, David Kuridze, explained to the same outlet that the "sun and sun-like stars" are systems characterized by "rapid and explosive events within their magnetic elements".
Therefore, understanding how these explosions on the sun's surface behave, as the images show, is "one of the main frontiers of modern solar physics" that will help understand how solar surface eruptions can interfere with human systems such as satellites, GPS navigation, or other global communications on Earth.