The sharpest-ever Sunspot image

This is the first sunspot image taken by the NSF’s Inouye Solar Telescope‘s Wave Front Correction context viewer.

The image reveals striking details of the sunspot’s structure as seen at the sun’s surface. The sunspot is sculpted by a convergence of intense magnetic fields and hot gas boiling up from below.

This image uses a warm palette of red and orange, but the context viewer took this sunspot image at the wavelength of 530 nanometers — in the greenish-yellow part of the visible spectrum. This is not the same naked eye sunspot group visible on the sun in late November and early December 2020.