Explanation:
Why does the Sun's surface keep changing?
The help find out, the US
National Science Foundation
(NSF) has
built the
Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope
in
Hawaii,
USA.
The Inouye telescope has a larger mirror that enables the capturing of images of
higher resolution, at a faster rate, and in more colors than ever
before.
Featured are recently-released
first-light images taken over 10 minutes and combined into a 5-second time-lapse
video.
The video captures an area on the Sun roughly the size of our Earth, features
granules roughly the size
of a country, and resolves features as small as 30-kilometers across.
Granule centers are bright due to the upwelling hot
solar
plasma,
while granule edges are dim due to the cooled plasma falling back.
Some regions between granules edges are
very bright as they are
curious magnetic windows into a deep and hotter solar interior.
How the Sun's magnetic field
keeps changing, channeling energy, and affecting the
distant Earth, among
many other topics, will be studied for years to come using data from the new
Inouye telescope.
