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By Maria Azzurra Volpe
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Astronomers have just captured the highest resolution images of a solar flare ever recorded, offering unprecedented insights into how the sun works and potentially transforming space weather forecasting.
The shots were captured during the decay phase of an X1.3-class flare on August 8, 2024 when scientists captured dark coronal loop strands with unprecedented clarity, using the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, built and operated by the National Solar Observatory (NSO.)
Coronal loops are arc-shaped structures of plasma that follow the Sun's magnetic field lines. They often appear before solar flares, which occur when some of these magnetic lines twist and break, releasing a surge of energy. This energy release drives solar storms that can disrupt critical infrastructure on Earth.
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To study these solar features, astronomers observed the sun surface at the H-alpha wavelength (656.28 nanometers), which revealed details otherwise invisible in any other types of solar imaging.
The images captured on August 8 show dark, thread-like loops arching in a glowing arcade, bright flare ribbons etched in almost impossibly sharp relief, a compact triangular one near the center, and a sweeping arc-shaped one across the top.
The coronal loops that the scientists were able to identify measured an average of 30 miles wide, with some as as thin as 13 miles—making these the smallest coronal loops ever observed.
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"This is the first time the Inouye Solar Telescope has ever observed an X-class flare," said Cole Tamburri—the study's lead author who is supported by the Inouye Solar Telescope Ambassador Program while completing his Ph.D. at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU)—in a statement.
"These flares are among the most energetic events our star produces, and we were fortunate to catch this one under perfect observing conditions. Before Inouye, we could only imagine what this scale looked like. Now we can see it directly. These are the smallest coronal loops ever imaged on the sun", he continued.
Tamburri and colleagues focused on the hundreds of razor-thin magnetic field loops woven above the flare ribbons, some at the telescope's resolution limit.
The Inouye's Visible Broadband Imager (VBI) instrument, tuned to the H-alpha filter, can resolve features down to ~39 miles, over two and a half times sharper than the next-best solar telescope.
"Knowing a telescope can theoretically do something is one thing," paper co-author Maria Kazachenko of the NSO said in a statement. "Actually watching it perform at that limit is exhilarating."
According to Tamburri, this kind of observation opens the door to studying not just their size, but the shapes and evolution of coronal loops—and even the scales on which magnetic re-connection occurs. He also believes that coronal loops might be elementary structures: the fundamental building blocks of flare architecture.
"If that's the case, we're not just resolving bundles of loops; we're resolving individual loops for the first time. It's like going from seeing a forest to suddenly seeing every single tree", he explained.
"It's a landmark moment in solar science. We're finally seeing the sun at the scales it works on."
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about solar flares? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
Reference
Tamburri, C. A., Kazachenko, M. D., Cauzzi, G., Kowalski, A. F., French, R., Yadav, R., Evans, C. L., Notsu, Y., Corchado-Albelo, M. F., Reardon, K. P., & Tritschler, A. (2025). Unveiling Unprecedented Fine Structure in Coronal Flare Loops with the DKIST. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 990(1). https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/adf95e
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