Hawaii’s brand new Inouye Solar Telescope kicked off science by seeing the “first light” and celebrated the occasion with four incredible new close-ups of the Sun.

These are an amazing follow-up to the highest-resolution images of the sun’s surface ever released shortly after the sun was built in 2020.

Currently the world’s largest solar telescope, the 13-foot/4-meter ground-mounted Inouye is located approximately 10,000 feet above sea level at the Haleakala Observatory on Maui. Built by NSF’s National Solar Observatory and managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), his Inouye has been in development for 20 years.

Forbes detailsSee stunning new 83-megapixel photos of the Sun sent back from spacecraft en routeTo Jamie Carter

Inoue is expected to dramatically advance scientists’ understanding of the Sun and its effects on the Earth.

Four new images of the Sun taken in June and July each measure a square of 10,000 pixels, making each one 100 megapixels in size.

Three of them are in the chromosphere, the lower region of the Sun’s atmosphere above the surface. It appears as a pinkish-reddish band around the Moon during the total phase of a total solar eclipse.

All four images show an area approximately 51,000 miles/82,500 kilometers across at a resolution of 11 miles/18 kilometers per pixel. Some images include the Earth due to scale.

“NSF’s Inouye Solar Telescope is the world’s most powerful solar telescope and will forever change the way we explore and understand the Sun,” said Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). said. “That insight will change the way our nation and the planet anticipate and prepare for events like solar storms.”

In a solar storm, a large number of charged solar particles ejected from the sun into space can reach Earth after a few days. Scientists hope Inoue will help extend the warning time for severe solar storms from hours to days.

Solar storms have become more frequent in recent months as Solar Cycle 26 intensifies. The Sun has a cycle of about 11 years in which it waxes and wanes in terms of solar activity. Some predict it could be the strongest since records began. The new Inouye Solar Telescope will get a ringside seat as the Sun approaches her 2024-2025 “solar maximum.”

The final image below shows the surface of the Sun. In it you can see a turbulent “boiling” plasma that envelops the entire star. Cell-like structures are the violent movements that carry heat from the interior of the Sun to its surface. Hot solar plasma rises in the bright centers of these cells, cools, and then sinks below the surface of the dark lanes in a process known as convection.

Inoue is the world’s largest solar telescope in terms of mirror size and aperture. Its genius is how it keeps its cool despite being pointed directly at the sun.The ice is produced at night in the observatory, and he has seven miles to distribute the coolant throughout. of plumbing. A dome surrounding the telescope has a cooling plate that stabilizes the temperature around the telescope, and a liquid-cooled metal “doughnut” blocks most of the solar energy from the primary mirror.

Formerly known as the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope, DKIST was renamed in honor of the late Senator Daniel K. Inouye from Hawaii, a staunch supporter of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

I wish you clear skies and wide eyes.