By

Elisha Sauers

on August 30, 2025

Astronomers have zoomed in on small loops of plasma within a powerful solar flare for the first time, potentially revealing the fundamental building blocks of the sun's violent storms.

The images, captured with the new Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, reveal arcs of hot gas just 10 to 30 miles wide that follow the sun’s magnetic fields. Earlier instruments could only resolve loops 60 to 100 miles wide. Inouye's images are over 2.5 times sharper.

Scientists believe these so-called "coronal loops" may in fact be the most basic pieces of solar flares — sudden explosions of energy that hurl a torrent of radiation into space and toward Earth.

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The discovery is giving a new window into how our host star makes flares in the first place. Gathering such insight may lead to better space weather forecasts, perhaps preventing future solar storms from wreaking havoc on satellites, power grids, and radio signals.

"Knowing a telescope can theoretically do something is one thing," said Maria Kazachenko, a co-author in the study, in a statement. "Actually watching it perform at that limit is exhilarating."

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The solar observatory sits atop a dormant volcano, Haleakal?, towering over Maui at 10,000 feet above sea level. Fittingly, the name Haleakal? means "house of the sun" in Hawaiian. But that's not why the site was selected for the telescope. The summit has special environmental conditions that allow astronomers to better view the sun's corona, the outer layer of its atmosphere.

For the study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the team measured 686 loops. They found the loops' widths tended to be similar in thickness, rather than a random mix. This suggests the telescope may finally be seeing the tiniest parts of a solar flare.