New telescope shows most detailed photo of the sun's surface. Chikki hai kya, asks Desi Twitter
Friday, January 31, 2020 IST
A new telescope recently captured the most detailed pictures yet of Sun. However, internet could not stop itself from cracking jokes on how it looked like chikki.
The never-before-seen images of the Sun's turbulent surface have been released by National Science Foundation
in the US. The Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) on the summit of Haleakala, Maui in Hawaii, released the pictures that show details as small as 30 km across the sun, reported the BBC.
This is remarkable when set against the scale of our star, which has a diameter of about 1.4 million km and is 149 million km from Earth. The cell-like structures are roughly the size of the US state of Texas. They are convecting masses of hot, excited gas, or plasma.
The bright centres are where this solar material is rising; the surrounding dark lanes are where plasma is cooling and sinking. After the highest resolution image of the sun's surface were released, internet had a lot to say about it and some reactions have left us in splits.
The DKIST is a brand new facility positioned atop Haleakala, a 3,000m-high volcano on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Its 4m primary mirror is the world's largest for a solar telescope.
The telescope will be used to study the Sun's workings. Scientists want fresh insights on its dynamic behaviour in the hope that they can forecast better its energetic outbursts - what is often referred to as "space weather".
DKIST is a complement to the Solar Orbiter (SolO) space observatory which is being launched next week from Cape Canaveral in Florida. This joint European-US probe will take pictures of the Sun from the closest ever vantage point from just 42 million km from the surface.
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