Thanks to revolutionary technology, the solar corona – the hot, mysterious outer shell of our Sun – has revealed its deepest secrets. For the first time, scientists have obtained extremely clear images of this region, which is usually hidden by the blinding light of the star and visible only during total eclipses.
Researchers from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) and the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have unveiled a unique adaptive optical system called Cona. Mounted on the 1.6-meter Goode Solar Telescope (GST), it instantly compensates for distortions introduced by Earth’s atmosphere. The system’s mirror adjusts 2200 times per second, neutralizing atmospheric “shake” and vibrations of the telescope itself. This provided images of the corona with incredible detail.
“We’ve increased the resolution 10 times. This opens new horizons for solar research,” said Dirk Schmidt, head of NSO’s Adaptive Optics Group and lead author of the study published in Nature Astronomy.
Prior to this, observations of the faint corona were extremely difficult due to atmospheric distortions. Details were blurred to a scale of about 1000 km, a limitation that has existed for more than 80 years. Now with Cona, scientists can now distinguish objects as small as 63 kilometers — this is the theoretical limit of the capabilities of the GST. The new images and videos are stunningly detailed, showing individual prominences, spicules and coronal rain.
This breakthrough is extremely important for unraveling the Sun’s major mysteries, in particular why the corona is heated to millions of degrees, much hotter than the visible surface of the star (the photosphere), which is heated “only” to 5500°C. Detailed analysis of small structures in the corona, such as spicules and coronal rain, may provide clues to understanding heating mechanisms and energy fluxes.
The team’s next step is to implement similar technology on the powerful 4-meter DKIST (Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope) in Hawaii. This will potentially allow us to distinguish even finer details in our star’s atmosphere, bringing us closer to a full understanding of its dynamical nature.
We previously reported on how astronomers got incredible photos of sunspots from the largest solar telescope.
According to universetoday.com
