The Sun doesn’t just fuel almost all life on Earth. It’s also our astrophysical laboratory, the only star close enough to observe in sufficient detail.

This enormous ball of hydrogen and helium is made of plasma – extremely hot, electrically charged gas. The churning of plasma within the Sun produces an invisible magnetic field that envelops our entire Solar System.

Up close, at the Sun’s surface, the plasma is turbulent, dragging the magnetic field with it. It roils and bubbles and occasionally bursts out clouds of material known as coronal mass ejections.

Over the years, scientists have made many close-ups of the Sun’s surface with various telescopes and observatories. Now, we have the highest-resolution images yet, thanks to the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) on Maui, Hawai'i.

In a study published today in Nature, a team led by researchers from the US National Solar Observatory and Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research delivers new observations of the surface of the Sun with unprecedented precision – revealing a feature never seen before.

The Sun’s magnetic field drives what we call space weather. Explosive flares in the outer........

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