An international team of astronomers has released the highest-resolution image ever captured of the Sun’s visible surface, taken by the Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii. The image reveals previously unseen, tiny plasma whirlpool-like patterns, associated with Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities. These instabilities occur at the edges of solar granules, which are 500-2000 km in diameter, with some "fringes" only about 20 km wide. Resolving these structures is akin to seeing a €1 coin from 180 km away.

The findings, published in Nature, provide the first confirmation of Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities on the Sun. Researchers suggest these instabilities may explain the Sun's extremely hot outer atmosphere and the dynamics of magnetic energy on its surface. "The newly discovered plasma vortices impressively demonstrate how minute processes – at the limit of what we can resolve using all available techniques – significantly determine the nature of our star," stated Sami Solanki, director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research.