Space Thread

[spaminator]

Stunning images of sun's surface hailed as 'major step forward' for science
National Solar Observatory captures images of 'solar landscape unlike any that had been seen before'

Author of the article:Jane Stevenson
Published Aug 06, 2026 • 2 minute read

The sun's surface
The most detailed images of the sun's surface yet were taken by the National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope Photo by NSF/NSO/AURA/MPS

“A solar landscape unlike any that had been seen before.”


That was how the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Solar Observatory described the most detailed images taken of the sun’s surface.

The images of the sun’s surface or photosphere were captured by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope — the world’s most powerful solar telescope — on the island of Maui in Hawaii.

The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

When scientists saw the results of the telescope’s capabilities, they realized they’d snapped photos of the sun’s bright outer shell at higher resolution than ever before with tiny swirling patterns like small whirlpools showing up in the images.

The U.S National
The U.S. National Science Foundation Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, built and managed by the NSF National Solar Observatory, in Maui (NSF-NSO-AURA) Photo by NSF/NSO/AURA
Solar landscape unlike anything else
The images “reveal a solar landscape unlike any that had been seen before, uncovering small-scale and dynamic swirls everywhere at the edges of magnetic areas,” the NSF’s National Solar Observatory said in an Wednesday news release.


The ripples on the sun’s surface are caused by a well-known phenomenon called the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI).

“An effect caused by fluid motion, KHI occurs when two fluids slide past each other at different velocities creating a ‘shear’ at the interface — causing small disturbances to grow into striking wave-like or spiraling vortices that look like breaking ocean waves, “ said the news release.

”Since its original formulation by Lord Kelvin and Hermann von Helmholtz around 1870, KHI has been observed and investigated across many areas of physics, including fluid dynamics, meteorology, oceanography, heliosphysics, and astrophysics. The instability is observed at a variety of scales from small lake and ocean waves (in windy conditions) and cloud formations on Earth, to the atmospheres of gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn.”


‘Major step forward’ for solar science
Dr. David Boboltz, deputy director at the National Solar Observatory, said the discovery, “backed up by analysis of numerical simulations, is a major step forward in our understanding of the dynamics and evolution of solar and stellar plasma and will serve as a basis for future discoveries.”


Researchers suggest that KHI might be a key reason why the Sun’s outer atmosphere gets so hot and why magnetic energy builds up and fuels solar flares and eruptions that can send bursts of energy toward Earth, affecting satellites, power grids and other technology.

“We believe that the discovery of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the solar photosphere, backed up by analysis of numerical simulations, is a major step forward in our understanding of the dynamics and evolution of solar and stellar plasma and will serve as a basis for future discoveries,” said Boboltz in a statement.

The next phase of analysis includes using computer programs that can automatically spot and study these swirling patterns aided by the high resolution data from the Inouye Solar Telescope.

Stunning images of sun's surface hailed as 'major step forward' for science

The US National Science Foundation’s National Solar Observatory has captured the most detailed images taken of the sun's surface. Read more.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

Milky Way's fastest star discovered spinning around black hole
Star S301 is two billion times fainter than the star Betelgeuse in our sky

Author of the article:AFP
AFP
Bénédicte Salvetat Rey
Published Aug 20, 2026 • Last updated 14 hours ago • 2 minute read
Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, has supermassive black hole sitting at its heart.
Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, has supermassive black hole sitting at its heart. Photo by Handout /NASA/AFP/File

Astronomers have discovered the fastest star in the Milky Way zooming at 25,000 kilometres a second around the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.


The star, named S301, orbits so dangerously close to the black hole that scientists believe it can shed light on this unimaginably powerful cosmic monster — and test out Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

“Decades carefully tracking stars orbiting our galaxy’s central black hole, Sagittarius A*, have led to this breakthrough discovery,” Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany said in a statement.

“Because it orbits so close to Sagittarius A*, S301 opens a new window to the fundamental properties of spacetime in this extreme black-hole environment,” added Genzel, who shared a 2020 physics Nobel prize for discovering the black hole.

To spot S301 — which is two billion times fainter than the star Betelgeuse in our sky — the team of astronomers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in the Chilean desert.


They first noticed the star in 2023, and have been tracking its orbit since.

“What is special about this star is that it’s orbiting Sagittarius A* on a very tight orbit, taking just 8.7 years to complete it,” explained Felix Mang, a co-author of a new study describing the discovery.

The star gets roughly as close to the black hole as Saturn gets to our Sun, which is “unprecedented”, the PhD student emphasised.

– Torn from its partner –
When the star gets closest to the immense suck of the black hole, it is travelling around 25,000 kilometres per second (15,500 miles per second).

The Sagittarius A* black hole. Scientists hope to learn more about it by studying this speedy star’s orbit. (Handout/European Southern Observatory/AFP/File)
That is 100,000 times faster than a commercial airplane, or more than eight percent of the speed of light, making it the fastest star ever detected in our galaxy.

Scientists believe that S301 was once part of a binary star system that was torn apart by the almighty pull of the black hole.

While S301 became trapped in the black hole’s gravity, its partner star was blasted out with such force it likely left the galaxy entirely.


The astronomers will get another good look at the star when it makes its next closest approach to the black hole in 2031.

The team hopes that data from two complete orbits will allow them to determine the star’s trajectory with enough precision they can also directly measure the black hole’s rotation.

Like most objects in the universe, black holes are thought to spin.

Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicted that a spinning black hole would drag spacetime along with it, twisting it in a way that changes the orbits of the surrounding stars.

Within the next 10 years, the astronomers hope to use S301 to measure the black hole’s spin for the first time.

“Without this star, we would need to measure the motion of other stars for several more decades to get anywhere close to measuring the spin of the black hole,” explained French astronomer and study co-author Juan Osorno.

The study was published in Nature on Wednesday.

Milky Way's fastest star discovered spinning around black hole

Star S301 is two billion times fainter than the star Betelgeuse in our sky

torontosun.com

 

[55Mercury]

The only relativity to this planet, or anyone living today, of anything 'quantum' won't exist for a million years, so...

Irrelative?...well, irregardless... irrelevant at the very least.