{"id":34268,"date":"2026-08-06T11:24:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T15:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=34268"},"modified":"2026-08-06T11:24:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T15:24:21","slug":"the-suns-surface-is-weirder-than-you-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=34268","title":{"rendered":"THE SUN&#8217;S SURFACE IS WEIRDER THAN YOU THOUGHT"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Space Weather News for Aug. 5, 2026<\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/us.list-manage.com\/eN6mWjumjL4?e=de6f94dc30&amp;c2id=b50d86a5c46b1d63a0ed24c2e6f20528\">Free Space Weather Newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong> THE SUN&#8217;S SURFACE IS WEIRDER THAN YOU THOUGHT: <\/strong><\/span>A giant telescope in Hawaii just saw something unprecedented on the sun. The surface of our star, it turns out, is covered with tiny ripples and whirlpools that previous telescopes could not see. The images were <a href=\"https:\/\/nso.edu\/press-release\/nsf-inouye-solar-telescope-enables-major-discovery-of-a-hidden-solar-process\/\">published<\/a> Aug. 5th in the journal Nature:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/spaceweather.com\/images2026\/05aug26\/whirlpools.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/spaceweather.com\/images2026\/05aug26\/whirlpools_strip.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"520\" height=\"390\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Solar physicists have long suspected these swirls exist, but they were simply too small to see. The <a href=\"https:\/\/nso.edu\/telescopes\/inouye-solar-telescope\/\">Inouye Solar Telescope<\/a>, the world&#8217;s largest with a 4-meter mirror atop Haleakal\u0101 on Maui, finally has the resolution to catch them.<\/p>\n<p>The Maui-sized whirlpools are caused by Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities. Van Gogh famously painted them in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Starry_Night\">Starry Night<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Starry_Night\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/spaceweather.com\/images2026\/05aug26\/starrynight_med.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"180\" height=\"151\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>Here on Earth, Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities make ocean waves curl when wind blows across water. On the sun, the &#8220;wind&#8221; is plasma. Where magnetized plasma and non-magnetized plasma slide past one another at different speeds, the boundary between them rolls up into vortices.<\/p>\n<p>This could help solve the long-standing puzzle of where solar flares get their power. These explosions are driven by magnetic energy. The newfound whirlpools build up that energy, creating little reservoirs of power for flares and CMEs.<\/p>\n<p>Even if you don&#8217;t believe it or understand it you will love the movies. <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/aVUwBmImyYM?si=L6akchf5K0ADx-u_\">Watch them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Space Weather News for Aug. 5, 2026 Free Space Weather Newsletter THE SUN&#8217;S SURFACE IS WEIRDER THAN YOU THOUGHT: A giant telescope in Hawaii just saw something unprecedented on the sun. The surface of our star, it turns out, is covered with tiny ripples and whirlpools that previous telescopes could not see. The images were &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=34268\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">THE SUN&#8217;S SURFACE IS WEIRDER THAN YOU THOUGHT<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":645,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[133],"tags":[276],"class_list":["post-34268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy-news","tag-sun"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/645"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34269,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34268\/revisions\/34269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}