August 5, 2026 / 8:55 PM EDT
/ CBS/AP
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Scientists have captured images of the sun's surface in the finest detail yet, revealing a strange and dynamic facade. It's dangerous to look directly at the sun without proper eye protection. But researchers were able to peek at its scorching surface with the help of the National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, located on the island of Maui in Hawaii. Scientists originally took the images for a different reason: to fine-tune and test the limits of the telescope. But when they looked at the results, they realized they'd photographed the sun's bright outer shell at higher resolution than ever before.What's more, they saw strange feathery patterns rippling across the surface. The images "reveal a solar landscape unlike any that had been seen before, uncovering small-scale and dynamic swirls everywhere at the edges of magnetic areas," the NSF's National Solar Observatory said in a news release.
This undated image provided by the NSF National Solar Observatory on Aug. 3, 2026, shows the sun's surface.
