World’s Largest Solar Telescope releases its First Picture of Sunspot

It is 10,000 miles wide

The world’s largest solar telescope, US National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Maui, Hawaii releases its first image of 10,000 miles wide sunspot. It could fit the entire Earth inside. The image shows the dark centre of the sunspot which burns at 7,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

The sunspot image achieves a spatial resolution of about 2.5 times higher than the previously achieved ones. So the magnetic structures as small as 20 kilometres on the surface of the sun is shown. The highlight of the image is the streaky appearance of hot and cold gases sprawling out from the darker centre. The spot in the centre is result of sculpting by a convergence of intense magnetic fields and hot gases boiling up from below. The telescope was constructed to uncover the Sun’s explosive behaviour. Even though the construction is not yet completed, it is still powerful enough to capture close up images of our blazing star, the Sun.