World’s strongest solar telescope records first giant flare in stunning detail

Inouye Telescope Captures First-Ever X-Class Solar Flare in Detail. (Image: NASA/ESA)

The Sun let out one more secret, and this time scientists were paying close attention. The mighty Inouye Solar Telescope has produced its first clear image of an X-class solar flare, revealing new details never observed before.

What did the telescope capture exactly?

On 8 August 2024, the telescope recorded an X1.3-class flare at remarkable resolution. The image spanned the size of four Earths across. It revealed coronal loops thinner than ever measured, some only 21 kilometres wide. These loops are made of plasma shaped by magnetic field lines.

Why are these solar flare details important?
Coronal loops often appear before solar flares erupt. Flares occur when magnetic fields twist, snap, and reconnect. Until now, telescopes only resolved loop bundles, not individual strands. Inouye, with twice the power of other instruments, has shown the smallest loops for the first time.

What could this mean for solar science?
Solar flares can disrupt radio communication on Earth for hours. Understanding their cause may help scientists predict them more accurately. Astronomer Cole Tamburri of the University of California Boulder said the observations open the door to studying flare behaviour at the scales where magnetic reconnection occurs. With Inouye, researchers are finally seeing the Sun at the sizes it truly works on.

The study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.