World's largest solar telescope shows off its full force with new image
'The instrument is, so to speak, the heart of the solar telescope, which is now finally beating at its final destination,' VTF project scientist Matthias Schubert said in a statement.
VTF's primary goal is to image the sun at the absolute highest spatial, spectral, and temporal resolutions possible. Doing so will help experts gain a better understanding of the sun's dynamic and complex behaviors, particularly the powerful particles, solar energy, and stellar radiation it ejects across the solar system. These solar storms routinely produce colorful atmospheric auroras on Earth, but especially intense events can wreak havoc on satellites and global communications systems. Studying the sun's photosphere and chromosphere will allow researchers to examine how plasma flows and shifting magnetic fields interact to trigger surface eruptions.
DKIST's VTF is specifically designed to help determine attributes like magnetic field strength, temperature, pressure, and plasma flow velocity. It is a massive addition to what is already a giant observational installation. At around the size of a small garage, the 5.6 ton instrument occupies two floors at the National Solar Observatory.
The VTF was developed and constructed at Germany's Institute for Solar Physics over the last 15 years—nearly as long as the time spent on DKIST itself. The painstaking installation process began at the beginning of 2024, and took months of work to complete before it could be utilized for the first time.
VTF's first public image also showcases one of our star's ever-changing sunspots, which are linked to comparatively strong magnetic fields that prevent plasma from escaping the star's interior. To record the event, the VTF relied on sunlight with a wavelength of 588.9 nanometers, and also depicts the sunspot's penumbra over a region measuring approximately 15,535-square-miles.
'The Inouye Solar Telescope was designed to study the underlying physics of the Sun as the driver of space weather,' said Christoph Keller, Director of the National Solar Observatory, which is responsible for operating DKIST. 'In pursuing this goal, the Inouye is an ideal platform for an unprecedented and pioneering instrument like the VTF.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
NASA just took the closest-ever images of the sun, and they are incredible (video)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. NASA's Parker Solar Probe is no stranger to breaking records. On Dec. 24, 2024, Parker made history by flying closer to the sun than any spacecraft in history. The probe reached a distance of just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) from the solar surface, entering the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere, known as the corona. During this flyby, it also reached a top speed of 430,000 miles per hour (690,000 kilometers per hour), breaking its own record as the fastest ever human-made object. Now, NASA has released remarkable video captured during the historic flyby, offering the closest views of the sun ever recorded. The new images were captured with Parker's Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe, or WISPR, revealing a never-before-seen view of the sun's corona and solar winds shortly after they are released from the corona. Video not playing? Some ad blockers can disable our video player. "Parker Solar Probe has once again transported us into the dynamic atmosphere of our closest star," said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a statement accompanying the images. "We are witnessing where space weather threats to Earth begin, with our eyes, not just with models. This new data will help us vastly improve our space weather predictions to ensure the safety of our astronauts and the protection of our technology here on Earth and throughout the solar system." WISPR's images revealed an important boundary in the sun's atmosphere called the heliospheric current sheet, where the sun's magnetic field changes direction from north to south. It also captured, for the first time in high resolution, collisions between multiple coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are major drivers of space weather, and are important in understanding risks to astronauts and technology on Earth such as power grids and communications satellites. "In these images, we're seeing the CMEs basically piling up on top of one another," said Angelos Vourlidas, the WISPR instrument scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which designed, built, and operates the spacecraft in Laurel, Maryland. "We're using this to figure out how the CMEs merge together." Before the Parker Solar Probe, NASA and its international partners could only study solar wind from afar, which is why the spacecraft has been instrumental in closing key knowledge gaps. It identified the widespread presence of "switchbacks" — zig-zagging magnetic field patterns — around 14.7 million miles from the sun and linked them to the origins of one of the two main types of solar wind. Closer in, at just 8 million miles, Parker discovered that the boundary of the sun's corona is far more uneven and complex than previously believed. But more remained to be discovered. "The big unknown has been: how is the solar wind generated, and how does it manage to escape the sun's immense gravitational pull?" said Nour Rawafi, the project scientist for Parker Solar Probe at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. "Understanding this continuous flow of particles, particularly the slow solar wind, is a major challenge, especially given the diversity in the properties of these streams — but with Parker Solar Probe, we're closer than ever to uncovering their origins and how they evolve." Prior to Parker Solar Probe, distant observations suggested there are actually two varieties of slow solar wind, distinguished by the orientation or variability of their magnetic fields. One type of slow solar wind, called Alfvénic, has small-scale switchbacks. The second type, called non-Alfvénic, doesn't show these variations in its magnetic field. As it spiraled closer to the sun, Parker Solar Probe confirmed there are indeed two types of solar wind. Its close-up views are also helping scientists differentiate the origins of the two types, which scientists believe are unique. The non-Alfvénic wind may come off features called helmet streamers — large loops connecting active regions where some particles can heat up enough to escape — whereas Alfvénic wind might originate near coronal holes, or dark, cool regions in the corona. "We don't have a final consensus yet, but we have a whole lot of new intriguing data," said Adam Szabo, Parker Solar Probe mission scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Parker Solar Probe is built to endure extreme conditions — from the freezing cold of deep space to the intense heat near the sun. A key factor in its survival is the difference between temperature and heat. While space near the sun can reach temperatures of several million degrees, that doesn't necessarily mean there's a lot of heat. This is because the sun's corona is extremely thin, meaning there are fewer particles. Even though individual particles in the corona are incredibly hot, there aren't many. The probe, therefore, doesn't receive much heat. "While Parker Solar Probe will be traveling through a space with temperatures of several million degrees, the surface of [its] heat shield that faces the sun will only get heated to about 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,400 degrees Celsius)," write NASA scientists. These temperatures are, of course, still incredibly hot, which makes its heat shield, the Thermal Protection System (TPS), essential. The shield is made from a carbon composite foam sandwiched between two carbon plates. Carbon is ideal for this purpose because it is both lightweight and able to withstand extremely high temperatures without melting. "Tested to withstand up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius), the TPS can handle any heat the sun can send its way, keeping almost all instrumentation safe," explained NASA. Its structure allows it to endure intense heat while minimizing weight, making it crucial for a spacecraft that needs to travel at extreme speeds. The outer surface of the TPS is also coated with a white ceramic paint, which helps reflect as much solar energy as possible and further reduces the amount of heat absorbed.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Trump administration reportedly planning to cut 2,145 Nasa employees
The Trump administration is reportedly planning to cut at least 2,145 high-ranking Nasa employees with specialized skills or management responsibilities. According to documents obtained by Politico, most employees leaving are in senior-level government ranks, depriving the agency of decades of experience as part of a push to slash the size of the federal government through early retirement, buyouts and deferred resignations. The documents indicate that 1,818 of the staff currently serve in core mission areas, such as science or human space flight, while the others work in mission support roles including information technology, or IT. Related: Trump names Sean Duffy as interim Nasa head after rejecting Elon Musk ally Asked about the proposed cuts, agency spokesperson Bethany Stevens told Reuters: 'NASA remains committed to our mission as we work within a more prioritized budget.' Since Trump returned to office in January, planning in the US space industry and among Nasa's workforce of 18,000 people has been thrown into chaos by the layoffs and proposed budget cuts for fiscal year 2026 that would cancel dozens of science programs. Last week, seven former heads of Nasa's Science Mission Directorate signed a joint letter to Congress condemning the White House's proposed 47% cuts to Nasa science activities in its 2026 budget proposal. In the letter, the former officials urged the House appropriations committee 'to preserve US leadership in space exploration and reject the unprecedented cuts to space science concocted by the White House's Budget Director, Russ Vought'. 'The economics of these proposed cuts ignore a fundamental truth: investments in NASA science have been and are a powerful driver of the U.S. economy and technological leadership,' the letter read. 'In our former roles leading NASA's space science enterprise, we consistently saw skilled teams innovate in the face of seemingly impossible goals, including landing a car-sized rover on Mars with pinpoint precision, build a massive telescope that can unfold in the vacuum of space to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos, design and operate a spacecraft hardy enough to survive temperatures of many thousands of degrees at the Sun, inspiring young and old alike worldwide by the stunning images from the Hubble Space Telescope, and pioneering the use of small satellites for science.' Related: Trump delays plan to cut satellite data access crucial to hurricane forecasting They also warned that the cuts threatened to cede US leadership to China: 'Global space competition extends far past Moon and Mars exploration. The Chinese space science program is aggressive, ambitious, and well-funded. It is proposing missions to return samples from Mars, explore Neptune, monitor climate change for the benefit of the Chinese industry and population, and peer into the universe – all activities that the FY 2026 NASA budget proposal indicates the US will abandon.' Nasa also remains without a confirmed administrator, since the Trump administration abruptly withdrew its nominee, the billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman, in an apparent act of retaliation against Elon Musk, who had proposed his nomination. In a social media post attacking Musk on Sunday, Trump wrote that he thought it would have been thought 'inappropriate that a very close friend of Elon, who was in the Space Business, run NASA, when NASA is such a big part of Elon's corporate life'.
USA Today
3 days ago
- USA Today
What's at the center of a black hole? Scientists have a sobering answer.
First, the good news: Black holes aren't out to get us. But they do hold unfathomable mysteries. They're the boogeymen of science fiction, a paradox of science and quite possibly a key to understanding the universe. Scientists have been scrambling to understand the mysterious forces of black holes for decades, but so far it seems they've found more existential questions than answers. We know a black hole is so heavy that its gravity creates a kind of divot in the geometry of the universe, said Priyamvada Natarajan, a theoretical astrophysicist at Yale University. "A black hole is so concentrated that it causes a little deep puncture in space/time. At the end of the puncture you have a thing called a singularity where all known laws of nature break down. Nothing that we know of exists at that point." Understanding what science knows about black holes involves mysterious little red dots, the formation of galaxies, and spaghettification (the unpleasant thought experiment about what would happen to a person unlucky enough to be sucked into a black hole). First, the good news: Black holes aren't out to get us. They aren't whizzing around the universe looking for galaxies, suns and planets to devour. "They don't just sneak up to you in a dark alley," said Lloyd Knox, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Davis. But our understanding of the very fundamentals of the universe has been transformed over the past decade by new telescopes and sensors that are letting scientists see more black holes and at every stage of their lives. "Our understanding of the role black holes play, that they are an essential part of the formation of galaxies, is new," said Natarajan. Here what cosmic secrets are being revealed: A new kind of black hole and a newly proven theory The original understanding of how black holes formed was that when a sufficiently large sun (about 10 times or more massive than our Sun) reached the end of its life, it could explode into a supernova that then collapses back into a black hole. The matter can collapse down into something only a few miles across, becoming so dense that its gravity is strong enough that nothing, not even light, can escape. This is what is called a stellar mass black hole. But in the past two decades, new types of black holes have been seen and astronomers are beginning to understand how they form. Called supermassive black holes, they have been found at the center of pretty much every galaxy and are a hundred thousand to billion times the mass of our Sun. But how did they form? "The original idea was that small black holes formed and then they grew," said Natarajan. "But then there's a timing crunch to explain the monsters seen in the early universe. Even if they're gobbling down stellar gas, did they have the time to get so big? That was an open question even 20 years ago." In 2017, she theorized that these supermassive black holes from the early beginnings of the universe happened when galactic gas clouds collapsed directly in on themselves, skipping the star stage entirely and going straight from gas to a massive black hole seed, with a head start, that could then grow. "Then guess what? In 2023 the James Webb telescope found these objects," she said. "This is what a scientist lives for, to make a prediction and see it proven." Black holes don't suck everything into them Because they have such massive gravity, black holes gobble up stellar gases and anything else that gets too close to them. But it's not an endless process that ends up with the entire universe being sucked into them. People sometimes worry that black holes are these huge vacuum cleaners that draw in everything in sight. "It's not like a whirlpool dragging everything into it," said Knox. Black holes are really like any other concentration of mass, whether it's a sun or a planet. They have their own gravitational pull but it isn't infinite. "If you're far enough away, you'd just feel the gravitational force, just the way you'd feel it from a planet," said Brenna Mockler, a post-doctoral fellow at the Carnegie Observatories at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena, California. If you fell into a black hole, you'd be 'spaghettified' All matter causes a dip or pothole in space/time, said Natarajan. A black hole is so heavy that its gravity creates a kind of divot in the geometry of the universe. "The bigger the mass, the bigger the pothole," she said. "At the end of the puncture you have a thing called a singularity where all known laws of nature break down. Nothing that we know of exists at that point." Where that puncture leads is unknown. "It's an open question," said Natarajan. "We don't think it could be another universe, because we don't know where in our universe it could go. But we don't know." So what if a human being fell into a black hole? Astrophysicists have a word for it – spaghettification. "If you were to fall into head first into a black hole, the different in gravity between your head and your toes would be so intense that you'd be stretched out and spaghettified," Natarajan said. Our Sun will never become a black hole There's no fear that our own Sun will become a black hole, said Knox. It's not big enough. "Lower mass stars burn through their hydrogen to make helium and then they'll start burning helium into carbon. And then at some point it ends up just pushing itself all apart," he said. "Our Sun will eventually expand and envelop the Earth and destroy it – but that's in 5 billion years, so you have some time to get ready. But it won't become a black hole." A still unanswered mystery – 'little red dots' NASA's super powerful James Webb Space Telescope began its scientific mission in 2022 and almost immediately picked up something that so far no one can explain: small red objects that appear to be abundant in the cosmos. Dubbed "little red dots," these objects have perplexed astronomers. They could be very, very dense, highly star-forming galaxies. "Or they could be highly accreting supermassive black holes from the very early universe," said Mockler, who is an incoming professor at the University of California, Davis.
