New solar telescope images reveal sun’s surface details and corona heating mystery

Consensus Summary

Scientists using the Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii have captured unprecedented images of the sun’s surface, revealing swirling vortices and Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities smaller than 20km (12 miles). These findings may explain why the sun’s corona is millions of degrees hotter than its surface, a mystery that has puzzled researchers for decades. The telescope, the world’s most powerful, observed a magnetically active region near a sunspot, with data collected in just five minutes. The sun’s surface temperature is described as 6,000C by the Guardian and 5,500 degrees Celsius by ABC, while both agree the corona reaches temperatures of a few million degrees. The images could improve predictions of solar flares and space weather, as the small-scale plasma movements appear to drive larger atmospheric phenomena.