New ground-based images of the Sun’s surface
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken using the Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii. It shows the granule surface of the Sun at very high resolution, resolving objects as small as 12 miles across.
The team used the Inouye’s Visible Broadband Imager (VBI) instrument operating in the G-band, a specific range of visible light especially useful for studying the Sun because it highlights areas with strong magnetic activity, making features like sunspots and fine-scale structures like the ones in the study easier to see. The setup allows researchers to observe the solar photosphere at an impressive spatial resolution better than 0.03 arcseconds (i.e., about 20 kilometers on the Sun). This is the sharpest ever achieved in solar astronomy.
The scientists then used computer simulations to confirm that the smallest features, curtains of plasma raising along the walls of the granules, are linked to fluctuations in the Sun’s magnetic field.
As interesting and cutting edge this research is, the language of the press release seems more aimed at touting this telescope then describing new science. Practically every sentence uses words like “unmatched,” “unparalleled,” “unique,” and “unprecedented” (multiple times), and then ended with this quote:
“This is just one of many firsts for the Inouye, demonstrating how it continues to push the of solar research,” says NSO [National Solar Observatory] Associate Director for the NSF [National Science Foundation’s] Inouye Solar Telescope, Dr. David Boboltz. “It also underscores Inouye’s vital role in understanding the small-scale physics that drive space weather events that impact our increasingly technological society here on Earth.”
I have noticed this phenomenon recently in many government press releases. It appears that the releases issued in the past month have become less about real research and are more designed to lobby the public against any possible budget cuts proposed by the Trump administration.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
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4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken using the Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii. It shows the granule surface of the Sun at very high resolution, resolving objects as small as 12 miles across.
The team used the Inouye’s Visible Broadband Imager (VBI) instrument operating in the G-band, a specific range of visible light especially useful for studying the Sun because it highlights areas with strong magnetic activity, making features like sunspots and fine-scale structures like the ones in the study easier to see. The setup allows researchers to observe the solar photosphere at an impressive spatial resolution better than 0.03 arcseconds (i.e., about 20 kilometers on the Sun). This is the sharpest ever achieved in solar astronomy.
The scientists then used computer simulations to confirm that the smallest features, curtains of plasma raising along the walls of the granules, are linked to fluctuations in the Sun’s magnetic field.
As interesting and cutting edge this research is, the language of the press release seems more aimed at touting this telescope then describing new science. Practically every sentence uses words like “unmatched,” “unparalleled,” “unique,” and “unprecedented” (multiple times), and then ended with this quote:
“This is just one of many firsts for the Inouye, demonstrating how it continues to push the of solar research,” says NSO [National Solar Observatory] Associate Director for the NSF [National Science Foundation’s] Inouye Solar Telescope, Dr. David Boboltz. “It also underscores Inouye’s vital role in understanding the small-scale physics that drive space weather events that impact our increasingly technological society here on Earth.”
I have noticed this phenomenon recently in many government press releases. It appears that the releases issued in the past month have become less about real research and are more designed to lobby the public against any possible budget cuts proposed by the Trump administration.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
It looks almost like asphalt. But I bet it gets even hotter than asphalt does around here in July.
It does look like asphalt – asphalt that is old and in need of replacement.
The inset blowup, though, looks more like blistered skin – how appropriate.
Robert,
You wrote: “… curtains of plasma raising along the walls of the granules, …”
From my days in a solar astrophysics lab: the convection works the other way, up in the middle and back down again at the darker side walls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_granule
The rising part of each granule is located in the center, where the plasma is hotter. The outer edges of the granules are darker due to cooler descending plasma.
My recollection is that was in the 1990s that we started getting the resolution to make out these convection cells.
Although this news release announces “a new study shedding light on the fine-scale structure of the Sun’s surface” using “the unparalleled power” of their telescope, it seems to be merely bragging about the much higher resolution that this telescope gets over the good old days. You may be right that it is intended to let everyone know that their telescope is not the obsolete one and that some other telescope should lose its funding instead, since they are obviously on the verge of new and exciting science that has never before been seen.
Of course, wouldn’t it be nice if some science-minded philanthropists were to fund such observatories, then the telescope could be named after the philanthropists who supplied the funding rather than named after the senators who pork-barreled the funding.
Looks like Godzilla’s hide.
Edward: I wasn’t using “raising” to describe the curtains as moving upward. I used it (though clearly vaguely) as describing the curtain’s position above the granules.