Most detailed sun images ever reveal plasma vortices

Scientists have captured the highest-resolution images ever taken of the sun's surface, revealing turbulent, vortex-like plasma structures and providing the first direct evidence of a long-theorized physical process at work on our nearest star. The findings, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, were obtained using the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, the world's most powerful solar telescope.washingtonpost+1

A Blueberry From 70 Miles Away

The images, taken on April 14, 2025, achieve a spatial resolution of roughly 20 kilometers — fine enough to resolve features on the sun's surface equivalent to spotting a blueberry from 70 miles away. The video footage shows vortices of hot plasma ebbing and flowing as superheated material rises from below the surface and, upon cooling, sinks back into the star's interior.newscientist+1

"When I was sitting there with my colleagues and we looked at these images for the first time, we immediately recognized these Kelvin-Helmholtz patterns, and we were super excited right away," said Friedrich Wöger, a senior scientist at the National Solar Observatory and the telescope's instrument program scientist.gizmodo

The paper presents the first empirical evidence that the detailed disturbances and vortices visible on the photosphere are created by a process called Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, which occurs when two fluids moving at different speeds create wave patterns at their boundary. The effect is sometimes visible in Earth's clouds and was predicted to exist on the sun but had never been directly observed until now.washingtonpost+1

Implications for Solar Science

"Previous observations in fact lacked the sharpness to resolve these features, making the solar surface appear much smoother, almost like an out-of-focus photograph," said Vanessa Polito, a physicist at the Lockheed Martin ↗ 0.45% Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory who was not involved in the study.washingtonpost

What surprised researchers was that the patterns appeared everywhere in their field of view, not just in isolated pockets. The Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices form along the boundaries of granules — cells of rising plasma between 500 and 2,000 kilometers in diameter — particularly near sunspots.newscientist+1

The Coronal Heating Mystery

The discovery may help address one of solar physics' enduring puzzles: why the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, is far hotter than its visible surface. Andrew Hillier, a physicist at the University of Exeter not involved in the study, said the work's greatest importance likely lies in its implications for coronal heating, as the instability could inject magnetic energy into the corona at scales that are easier to dissipate.washingtonpost

"All these other mechanisms can now be analyzed based on that fact" that Kelvin-Helmholtz instability exists on the photosphere, Wöger said. Following this discovery, researchers plan to use the Inouye telescope to map instability patterns and quantify the strength of the sun's magnetic field.gizmodo+1