Astronomy: Here comes the Sun in high resolution (Nature)
6 August 2026
The highest resolution observations of the Sun’s visible surface reported to date are presented in Nature. The time-sequenced images provide a far more complex picture of the Sun’s surface layer than previously seen, giving new insights into the magnetically active regions within this layer.
The Sun’s visible surface (known as the photosphere) is a thin layer of its atmosphere where the fluid plasma becomes transparent, allowing light to escape. This region is known to be dynamic and complex, with many factors such as magnetic field and convection currents shaping the organization of the atmosphere.
David Kuridze, Friedrich Woeger, and colleagues use the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, Hawaii, USA to obtain the highest spatial resolution observations of the Sun’s visible surface acquired to date. The studied region is a magnetically active area close to a sunspot. In the new high-resolution images, the solar surface appears dominated by band-like and vortex-like structures. The authors associate these features with Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities, a classic fluid dynamics phenomenon in which rippled structures form when two fluids slide past each other at different speeds. This provides the first known confirmation of this phenomenon on the solar surface.
This discovery has implications for our understanding of how magnetic fields function in solar objects such as the Sun.
- Article
- Open access
- Published: 05 August 2026
Kuridze, D., Wöger, F., van Noort, M. et al. Ubiquitous Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities driving plasma mixing on the Sun. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10871-3
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