NSF Inouye Solar Telescope and computer simulations yield new insights into the Sun
The highest-resolution image of the Sun’s surface (photosphere) ever captured, taken at 416 nm by the Inouye Solar Telescope. It reveals deformed boundaries of magnetic elements and ultra-fine-scale stripes, both associated with Kelvin-Helmholtz instability.
NSF/NSO/AURA/MPS
[culled from an NCAR news item about an NSO press release] An international team of scientists has announced the discovery of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI) in the form of small, swirling, whirlpool-like patterns on the surface of the Sun. The research indicates that KHI might be a key reason why the Sun's outer atmosphere gets so hot, and why magnetic energy builds up and moves around on the Sun, ultimately fueling solar flares and eruptions that can affect Earth.
The team of scientists, from the National Solar Observatory, the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR), and the German Max Planck Institut für Sonnensystemforschung (MPS), published their findings in the journal Nature. They used the world's most powerful solar telescope, the NSF Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope near the summit of Maui’s Haleakalā, combined with high-resolution computer simulations based on code (named MPS/University of Chicago Radiative MHD, or MURaM) jointly built and maintained by international teams, including NSF NCAR and MPS.
“It is very exciting to see that the highest-resolution observations of the solar photosphere revealed a new dynamical regime in the form of KH vortices at the edges of magnetic field concentrations,” said NSF NCAR scientist Matthias Rempel, a co-author of the paper. “These observations also provide the highest resolution validation of solar magnetohydrodynamic simulations to date, and the agreement in physical details is impressive.”