# The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope produces the highest resolution image of the sun's surface



## Timeshifter (Apr 26, 2021)

Have to lol at this...

As Alexandra Witze reports for _Nature_, these are the first images taken with the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, which sits atop Haleakala, a dormant volcano in Hawai‘i. The Inouye Solar Telescope is the most powerful solar telescope in the world, and according to the National Science Foundation (NSF), its images show the sun in “unprecedented” detail.

The celestial body looks like a bubbling expanse of golden kernels, which in fact _*represent*_ *plasma* that covers the sun. (Interesting term...represent...)

The kernels—or *“cell-like structures*,” as the NSF puts it—are each about the *size of Texas*. Hot solar plasma rises up in the center of the cells and then cools, sinking down from the surface—“a process known as convection,” the NSF notes.

The sun is a constant swirl of violent activity, burning around 5 million tons of hydrogen fuel every second. That energy radiates into space, and the movement of the sun’s plasma “twists and tangles” solar magnetic fields, according to the NSF.
(Love how they tell us what to believe)

From *93 million* miles away, we can’t see all this motion, but we sometimes feel its effects. For instance, coronal mass ejections from the sun shoot charged particles into space that can collide with the Earth’s atmosphere and disrupt satellites, telecommunications and navigation systems, and power grids. In 2017, a solar flare caused blackouts across a wide geographic area, including the Caribbean—where, in an unfortunate coincidence, Hurricane Irma was raging and emergency radio communications were knocked out.

Here's the amazing image below....


The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope has produced the highest resolution image of the sun's surface ever taken. In this picture, taken at 789 nanometers (nm), we can see features as small as 30km (18 miles) in size for the first time ever. The image shows a pattern of turbulent, “boiling” gas that covers the entire sun. (NSO/AURA/NSF)​
So, no image of the earth from space, but here we have a macro close up of the sun, 93 million miles away, from some mountain top on earth...



Source


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## Archive (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: SearchingDate: 2020-01-31 20:02:49Reaction Score: 8


Looks like caramel popcorn.


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## Archive (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: BantaDate: 2020-01-31 21:07:07Reaction Score: 5


So, what kind of images are these? Is this data synthesized and created or a photograph? (What even is a "photograph" these days...?)



> The telescope took its first-light images in December, but engineers are still working to finish construction in the dome. That’s scheduled to be completed by 30 June, with science studies beginning in earnest in July. “It’s not easy to stand up a facility like this overnight,” says Thomas Rimmele, the project’s director at the National Solar Observatory in Boulder, Colorado. *“The fact that this complex machine delivered such images right out of the box is amazing.”*
> 
> Eventually, sunlight will stream into five instruments on the rotating platform beneath the telescope’s main mirror. Scientists can mix and match those instruments to address different questions in solar physics, says David Boboltz, programme director at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) in Alexandria, Virginia, which funded and built the telescope.
> 
> Sunlight hits the primary mirror and is focused to an intense point, which gets so hot that it could pop a bag of popcorn in three seconds. To prevent the heat from melting the telescope, engineers built a cooling system that makes the equivalent of a swimming pool full of ice every night.


I suspect the image is "enhanced" at the very least. It's really captivating though.


Edit: More from wiki:



> Visible Broadband Imager (VBI)	Edit
> The VBI is a diffraction-limited two-channel filtergraph each made of an interference filter and a digital scientific CMOS sensor camera that samples the image of the Sun. Each camera features 4k×4k pixels. The interference filters work as a band-pass filter that only transmits a selected wavelength range (i.e. color) of the sunlight. Four different interference filters are available in each channel that are mounted in a motorized fast-change filter wheel.
> 
> VBI blue channel (45″ field of view)
> ...


Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope - Wikipedia

Fabricated indeed.

An "image" is only as "true" as it's purpose.


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## Felix Noille (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: FelixnoilleDate: 2020-02-01 11:43:21Reaction Score: 6


When I was being told I was seeing photos or video footage of the sun, sunspots, solar flares etc., I've always thought I was looking at something going on under a microscope in a petri-dish or an a slide. These images don't seem to be any different imo.


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## Verity (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: VerityDate: 2020-02-01 13:28:18Reaction Score: 1




Felixnoille said:


> When I was being told I was seeing photos or video footage of the sun, sunspots, solar flares etc., I've always thought I was looking at something going on under a microscope in a petri-dish or an a slide. These images don't seen to be any different imo.


"As above, so below."


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