Researchers have snapped two ultra-clear pictures of the sun.
The photographs, taken by the New Solar Telescope (NST), reveal never-before-seen details about the sun's magnetism, a New Jersey Institute of Technology press release reported.
"With our new generation visible imaging spectrometer (VIS)," Wenda Cao, NJIT Associate Professor of Physics and BBSO Associate Director, said. "The solar atmosphere from the photosphere to the chromosphere can be monitored in a near real time. One image was taken with VIS on May 22, 2013 in H-alpha line center. The lawn-shaped pattern illustrates ultrafine magnetic loops rooted in the photosphere below."
The other photograph displays the clearest image ever taken of a sunspot.
"With the unprecedented resolution of BBSO's NST, many previously unknown small-scale sunspot features can now be perceived," Cao said.
"There are the twisting flows along the penumbra's less dark filaments, the complicated dynamic motion in the light bridge vertically spanning the umbra's darkest part and the dark cores of the small bright points or umbra dots," the press release said.
Professor Philip R. Goode, a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union set out in 2009 to build "the world's most capable solar telescope."
The result was NST, a 1.6 meter device that is known as the world's largest solar aperture telescope.
The telescope is being upgraded to include a "solar multi-conjugate adaptive optics system." Researchers hope the new system will be able to correct interfering atmospheric distortion.
NST will also receive the "only fully cryogenic solar spectrograph," which will help the telescope look at the sun in infrared.
The government in interested in advancing solar research because solar magnetic storms have been known to damage satellites and Earthly power grids.
Cao and her team hope to "eventually uncover the mystery of solar coronal heating."
NJIT partnered with the Big Bear Solar Observatory to create the images.
