Astronomers Capture Sharpest Image Ever of the Sun's Surface
Astronomers capture highest-resolution image ever of the Sun's surface
Astronomers have achieved a groundbreaking milestone by capturing the highest-resolution image of the Sun's surface to date. The image reveals intricate details of solar granules and sunspots, offering unprecedented insight into the Sun's turbulent atmosphere. This achievement, made possible by advanced telescope technology, promises to enhance our understanding of solar activity and its impact on space weather.
The new image reveals features as small as 30 kilometers across, offering a level of detail that could help scientists better understand the Sun's magnetic field and its role in solar flares.
- lucgommans
Figure 1c from the paper[1] looked like it would make a great desktop background, but the resolution on the web is mediocre and there is this dashed rectangle to indicate the extent of the d-f subimages. In the PDF, the rectangle is drawn on top as a separate object so you can easily extract the underlying object!
Here are the figure 1 a-c images, lossless as they are in the PDF, having cropped a few transparent pixels for each one: https://lucgommans.nl/tmp/doi_10.1038_s41586-026-10871-3_fig... https://lucgommans.nl/tmp/doi_10.1038_s41586-026-10871-3_fig... https://lucgommans.nl/tmp/doi_10.1038_s41586-026-10871-3_fig...
edit: supplementary video 2 has a panel similar to figure 1b in 10% higher resolution, screenshot: https://lucgommans.nl/tmp/doi_10.1038_s41586-026-10871-3_sup...
- dotfrag
In the abstract, they're stating that the magnetic field of the sun is what's causing the surface to look as if it's wind-swept -- is that right? Am I reading that correctly? So the extensive shifting of the magnetic field is causing the visual distortion?
- ChrisArchitect