New solar telescope has revealed the complex dynamics of dark patches at the center of the sunspots.
Groundbreaking images of the Sun captured by scientists at NJIT's Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) give a first-ever detailed view of the interior structure of umbrae; the dark patches in the center of sunspots, revealing dynamic magnetic fields responsible for the plumes of plasma that emerge as bright dots interrupting their darkness.
The high-resolution images, taken through the observatory's New Solar Telescope (NST), showed the atmosphere above the umbrae to be finely structured, consisting of hot plasma intermixed with cool plasma jets as wide as 100 kilometers.
Called spikes, the oscillating jets result from the penetration of magnetic and plasma waves from the Sun's photosphere, the light-giving layer of its atmosphere, into the abutting chromosphere, which they reach by traveling outward along magnetic tubes that serve as energy conduits.
The study is published in the Astrophysical Journal.