GREGOR Telescope has captured highest-resolution pictures of the sun and they are undoubtedly eerie and amazing at the same time. The European telescope at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife, Spain, and operated by German scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Solar Physics.
These photos offered a detailed look at the twisted structure of solar plasma, as well as sunspots — areas where the sun’s magnetic field is extraordinarily high and causes a spike in pressure that drops the temperature and darkens the surrounding atmosphere as reported by Huffingtonpost.
“This is as if one saw a needle on a soccer field perfectly sharp from a distance of one kilometer,” according to a press release announcing the photos.
Similar images of the sun’s surface taken by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii were released in January, drawing reactions across social media from commentators who said that the star’s hot plasma resembled kernels of popcorn.