The world’s largest solar telescopes have just taken the highest resolution images of solar flares to date, and they are spectacular.
Researchers trained Hawaii-based Daniel K. Inou Esolar Telescope in the final stages of a powerful X-Class solar flare on August 8, 2024, and captured detailed images of the chaotic loop of plasma on the surface of the sun. Observations can help scientists understand the dynamics of solar flares and improve their predictions of future flares.
“This is the first time the Inouye solar telescope has observed an X-class flare,” co-author Cole Tamburi, a solar physicist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said in a statement. “These flares are one of the most energetic events our stars produce, and we were fortunate to be able to catch this under perfect observation conditions.”
Solar flares are massive explosions of light emitted by the sun during solar storms. The twisted magnetic field creates a large bundled loop of plasma called an arcade that extends into the hot, outermost layer of the solar atmosphere, the corona. When the magnetic fields become very complicated, they return to place (a phenomenon known as magnetic reconnection), and the sun blows particles and energy into space in the form of solar flares. When targeting the Earth, energy from the flare can disrupt radio communications and disrupt spacecraft orbiting planets.
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However, scientists do not know the size of the plasma loops that make up these arcades. Previous observations of individual loops are limited by the resolution of the older solar telescopes.
In a new study published on August 25 in the Astrophysical Journal Letter, Tamburi and his colleagues used Inouye’s visible broadband imager equipment to collect high-resolution images of the plasma loop at the final stage of powerful solar flares. On average, the plasma loop spreads about 30 miles (48 kilometers) wide. However, some were small, down to about 13 miles (21 km), but small enough for the telescope to solve it.
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“We are finally peering into the spatial scale we’ve guessed over the years,” Tamburi said in a statement. “This opens the door to studying not only size, but also shape, evolution, and even scales where magnetic reconnection (the engine behind the flare) occurs.”
Researchers say the coronal loop observed here could be a component of the larger solar arcade. “If that’s the case, we’re not just solving a bunch of loops. We’re the first time we’re solving individual loops,” Tamburi said in a statement. “It’s like looking at the forest and then suddenly going to look at all the trees.”
New data on the coronal loop could help scientists improve their model of solar flare and better understand the magnetic field of corona, the researchers wrote in their study.
“This is a groundbreaking moment in solar science,” Tamburi said. “We’re finally seeing the sun on a scale that works.”
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