Overview
- A multinational team published in Nature on Wednesday the highest-resolution Inouye images that resolve filamentary lanes and small vortices down to about 20 kilometers on the solar surface.
- The data were taken with the four-meter Inouye Solar Telescope on Haleakalā using a broadband camera from the Max Planck Institute and show moving, wave-like strands not seen in earlier Inouye footage.
- Advanced magnetohydrodynamic simulations that include the Sun's magnetic field reproduce the observed banded and vortex patterns, leading researchers to identify them as Kelvin‑Helmholtz instabilities.
- Scientists say the widespread small vortices can twist and braid magnetic field lines, building stress that may be released as heat in the corona, and the team is planning targeted follow-up measurements to quantify the energy involved.
- The discovery changes the view of the photosphere's complexity and will feed into solar models and forecasting by giving observers a new mechanism to test for how surface flows drive magnetic heating higher in the atmosphere.