The incredible Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST, from English Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope) works in the park of the Haleakalā Observatory of the American University of Hawaii, on top of the homonymous volcano on the island of Maui, at an altitude of 3 kilometers . The Inouye telescope is the result of a quarter of a century of design and construction. It will soon be a year since it officially started scientific observations in November 2021.
Chromosféra (Photo: NSO / AURA / NSF)
The operators of this amazing tool recently celebrated the upcoming anniversary with new images showing our star in exceptional detail. Each of these images captures a region of the Sun about 82,500 kilometers long, with the high resolution capable of showing objects up to 18 kilometers in size.
The Inouye Solar Telescope is currently the most powerful device of its kind. Among other things, it can visualize the chromosphere, the middle layer of the Sun’s “atmosphere” that lies below the solar corona. At the same time, it is usually invisible and can only be seen during a total solar eclipse, when it forms the red border of a “dead” star.
It’s not just about aesthetics
Astronomer and telescope observation specialist Matt Mountain, president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), sees the launch of the Inouye telescope as a “ribbon cutting” for a new era in solar physics.
Chromosféra (Photo: NSO / AURA / NSF)
At the same time, of course, it’s not just about beautiful and very aesthetic images. Observations from the Inouye telescope could lead us, for example, to improve predictions of the Sun’s behavior, in particular solar storms, which flood the Solar System with hot plasma and could seriously affect modern civilization, which today relies heavily on satellites and on electronics.
Mountain in a press release express thanks the US National Science Foundation (NSF) grant agency and the US Congress for critical financial support.
Last but not least, he also thanked the native inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands for being able to work in the exceptional location of the Haleakalā volcano, as some of them have opposed the construction and operation of astronomical structures in recent years.
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