Scientists capture sharpest-ever Sun images revealing never-before-seen plasma vortices

Sharpest images ever captured

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, perched on the Haleakalā volcano on the Hawaiian island of Maui, has produced the most detailed images of the Sun's surface ever recorded. The telescope, equipped with a four-meter main mirror, resolved structures as small as 20 kilometres across, a feat comparable to spotting a euro coin from 180 kilometres away. The findings were published in the journal Nature on 5 August 2026 under the title "Ubiquitous Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities driving plasma mixing on the Sun."

The images were originally captured in early 2020 as a test to probe the telescope's limits. Only when researchers examined the results did they realise they had photographed the Sun's bright outer shell, the photosphere, at a resolution never before achieved. The visible portion of the Sun covered approximately 5,000 by 3,500 kilometres.

Never-before-seen plasma vortices

Across the surface, the team observed swirling, feathery patterns of plasma vortices ranging from 500 to 2,000 kilometres across. These structures are interpreted as signs of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, a well-known fluid dynamics phenomenon that occurs when layers of fluid move past each other at different speeds, generating perturbations that grow into vortices. The effect has been observed on Earth and on planets such as Jupiter and Saturn, but had never been seen at this level on the solar surface.

“It has not been observed ever at that level on the solar surface.”

Solar physicist Ruizhu Chen of Stanford University, who was not involved in the research, compared the patterns to art.

“That reminds me of famous paintings, like the swirling skies in Van Gogh's Starry Night.”

A clue to the corona heating mystery

The discovery may help explain one of solar physics' longest-standing puzzles: why the Sun's corona, its outermost atmospheric layer, reaches temperatures in the millions of degrees while the surface itself sits at roughly 5,500 to 6,000 degrees. David Kuridze, an astronomer at the National Solar Observatory in Boulder, Colorado, and a lead author of the study, said the instability could be the mechanism that transfers energy to smaller scales where it dissipates as heat.

“This could solve the biggest mystery of the last fifty years for solar physics and astrophysics. When this instability occurs in the system, it is very easy for energy to propagate to smaller scales. And at some point, it simply dissipates as heat. This could generate hot coronas, hot outer atmospheres both in the Sun and in similar stars.”

Thomas Rimmele of the National Solar Observatory echoed the significance, noting that the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability is probably a mechanism contributing to the heating of the Sun's outer atmosphere and is part of the solution to why stars have a million-degree Kelvin corona.

Implications for space weather

The vortices may also shed light on how the Sun stores and releases energy in its magnetic field. According to current theory, the Sun accumulates energy when magnetic field lines twist, storing it like a mechanical spring, and releases it suddenly through magnetic reconnection. The newly observed vortices, which appear to form constantly wherever the magnetic field is sufficiently intense, could be the driving force behind that twisting.

David Boboltz, associate director for the Inouye telescope at the National Solar Observatory, described the result's significance.

“It's a breakthrough in our understanding of the dynamics and evolution of solar and stellar plasma.”

The research team included scientists from the NSF National Solar Observatory in the United States, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, the High Altitude Observatory in the United States, and researchers from South Korea.

Scientists hope the findings will improve models for forecasting space weather, including coronal mass ejections that can hurl energy toward Earth, potentially disrupting GPS communications, satellites, and power grids while producing colourful auroras.