Curious what our mother star looks like up close? The space photo of the week shows it!
This image was taken in 2020 by the state-of-the-art Inouye Solar Telescope on top of the Hawaiian volcano Haleakala. Here we see a gigantic nuclear reactor at work. Every second, our parent star burns five million tons of hydrogen. This releases a lot of energy and that heat has to be fired.
On the surface of the sun we see cell-like structures. These look just like corn kernels. Each grain is about the same size as France. These grains are created by warm solar plasma traveling from the interior of the sun to the surface. This hot solar plasma converges in the bright center of the ‘cells’, cools and then sinks back into the sun along the dark areas. This process is called convection. This also happens in the Earth’s atmosphere when the sun heats up the lower air layers. Warmer air is less dense than colder air and rises and then cools.
How big are these corn kernels? At the bottom left is a map of the US for reference.
Cooled Telescope
The sun is the hottest object in our solar system. It poses a challenge for large telescopes. The Inouye solar telescope therefore has a specialized cooling system to cool the four-meter mirror. Pipes more than 12 kilometers long transport coolant through the observatory, cooled in part by ice that is remanufactured every night. The dome that encases the telescope is covered with thin cooling plates that stabilize the temperature around the telescope, aided by shutters in the dome that provide shade and good air circulation.
Video of bubbling plasma
“These are the most detailed photos and videos of our sun to date,” said France Córdova, director of the US National Science Foundation. The video below shows the plasma bubbling on the sun. The video lasts fifteen seconds and is sped up. In reality, this bubbling takes ten minutes. “We used to see the sun as one bright object. But if we zoom in, we see all kinds of small structures,” concludes Thomas Rimmele, director of the Inouye telescope.
Sun is hot topic
The sun has been a beloved scientific subject for many decades. Logical, because this star has a major influence on life on Earth. Activities on the sun – known as space weather – can affect systems on Earth. Think of magnetic eruptions that affect air travel, disrupt satellite communications and disable power grids. In addition to the Inouye Solar Telescope, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is also busy collecting data about our star. At the end of last year, this space probe touched the sun for the first time. Parker flew through the sun’s upper atmosphere, the corona. The European Solar Orbiter also keeps a close eye on the sun. Early this year, this spacecraft captured beautiful images of our parent star.