The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), the world’s biggest solar telescope, caught its first picture of the sun — the highest-resolution picture of our star to date — a month ago.
The picture starts what researchers expect will be an about 50-year investigation of the Earth’s most significant star. The new pictures uncover little attractive structures in unimaginable detail. As development on the 4-meter telescope slows down on the peak of Haleakala on the Hawaiian island of Maui, a greater amount of the telescope’s instruments will start to come online, expanding its ability to reveal insight into the active sun.
Inouye’s one of a kind resolution and sensitivity will permit it to probe the sun’s magnetic field for the very first time as it studies the exercises that drive space climate in Earth’s neighborhood. Charged particles shed from the sun can interfere with Earth’s mechanical satellites, power grids, and communication infrastructure. The new telescope will likewise dive into one of the most counterintuitive solar mysteries: why the sun’s corona, or external layer, is hotter than its noticeable surface.
“These are the highest-resolution images and movies of the solar surface ever taken,” Inouye director Thomas Rimmele said during a news conference on Friday (Jan. 24). “Up to now, we’ve just seen the tip of the iceberg.”
