You’ve probably seen closeup images of the Sun before, revealing sunspots, solar storms or something else entirely. But you’ve never seen the Sun quite like this. These images were recently captured by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, the most powerful solar telescope on the planet.
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00:00You've probably seen close-up images of the Sun before, revealing sunspots, solar storms
00:09or something else entirely.
00:10But you've never seen the Sun quite like this.
00:13These images were recently captured by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, the most
00:17powerful solar telescope on the planet.
00:20Each of these images has captured just 20 miles of the Sun's surface at a time.
00:24For reference, the Sun stretches some 865,370 miles across.
00:30But despite being the biggest thing around, a lot of what goes on in the Sun is still
00:33very much a mystery.
00:34After all, we can't just land there and have a look around.
00:37Meaning images like these are likely going to help us better understand with far more
00:41accuracy how our system's central star ebbs and flows, especially as we approach the Sun's
00:4611-year solar maximum or the period when its activity crescendos.
00:50Currently, scientists don't really know why the Sun goes through an 11-year solar cycle
00:53or what causes sunspots, but it would behoove us to figure it out.
00:57Sunspots are where solar magnetic field lines snap and reconnect, sending coronal mass ejections
01:02out into space, some of which collide with our planet, causing electronic disruptions
01:07and sometimes gorgeous auroras.