Ultra-Closeup Shots Of The Sun Reveal Its Unexpected Honey-Like Texture

We all know by now that you should never look directly at the sun. However, these new photos are giving you a chance to look at our home star and gander at its incredibly interesting surface structure.

A telescope from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Inouye Solar Telescope, located in Hawai’i, has captured stunning images of the Sun’s peculiar surface. Each image from the telescope—which is also the most powerful telescope of its kind—has a resolution of 11.1 miles and ranges a distance of 51,260 miles. This is an incredible distance that only makes up single-digit percentages of our great stars’ entire circumference. 

The pictures depict the hot star’s chromosphere—or the middle layer of its atmosphere—and they show a viscous-looking substance that almost resembles sticky, stringy honey, or fabric, as we know it.

What makes it look like honey or shag carpeting are actually “spicules.” Spicules, as explained by the Smithsonian Magazine, are spurts of plasma that coat our home star’s surface. Spicules are said to emit from the Sun at a speed of 60 miles per second and can travel 6,000 miles. These hot shots of plasma are actually important to the star and help it maintain balance and transfer energy through its regions.

According to astrophysicist Dipankar Banerjee in 2019, spicules are created out of flux cancelations that take place in the lower atmosphere. This phenomenon helps heat the upper atmosphere of the sun. 

While these new images paint a Sun that looks like it is made out of tacky honey or fuzzy carpets, and these pictures may look like our star is something we can touch, if it is still too dangerous to look at, it is safe to say that the images show how much of a cozy hellscape the Sun can be.

[via Futurism and ScienceAlert, images via NSO/AURA/NSF]