World’s largest solar telescope captures clearest view of solar flare

By Dean Murray

The clearest pictures ever taken of a solar flare have been taken by the world's largest solar telescope.

Record-breaking images from the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii reveal a flare four times the diameter of Earth in the highest resolution ever.

The coronal loops seen within the flare are very fine strands averaging about 48.2 kilometers (approximately 30 miles) wide, with some loops as narrow as 21 kilometers (about 13 miles), the smallest coronal loops ever imaged.

The observations could reshape how we understand the Sun’s magnetic architecture and improve space weather forecasting.

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), who operate the telescope, said: "This marks a potential breakthrough in resolving the fundamental scale of solar coronal loops and pushing the limits of flare modeling into an entirely new realm."

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Astronomers captured the dark coronal loop strands with unprecedented clarity during the decay phase of an X1.3-class flare on Aug. 8, 2024.

Coronal loops are arches of plasma that follow the Sun’s magnetic field lines, often preceding solar flares that trigger sudden releases of energy associated with some of these magnetic field lines twisting and snapping. This burst of energy fuels solar storms that can impact Earth’s critical infrastructure.

"This is the first time the Inouye Solar Telescope has ever observed an X-class flare," says Cole Tamburri, the study’s lead author who is supported by the Inouye Solar Telescope Ambassador Program while completing his Ph.D. at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU). "These flares are among the most energetic events our star produces, and we were fortunate to catch this one under perfect observing conditions.”

The new findings could suggest that these loops might be elementary structures—the fundamental building blocks of flare architecture.

"If that’s the case, we’re not just resolving bundles of loops; we’re resolving individual loops for the first time," Tamburri adds. "It’s like going from seeing a forest to suddenly seeing every single tree."