MAUI, HAWAII: The world’s largest solar telescope just got a powerful new upgrade, promising to reveal the Sun like never before. The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, perched high on Maui, has been fitted with a new instrument called the Visible Tunable Filtergraph (VTF)—a game-changer for solar research.
This fifth and most powerful instrument now gives scientists an ultra-detailed view of the Sun’s surface (photosphere) and the layer above it (chromosphere), where explosive solar eruptions are triggered. And even though the VTF is still in its testing phase, it’s already producing spectacular results.
Its first image shows an enormous sunspot covering around 625 million square kilometres, with astonishing clarity. Each pixel in the photo captures just 10 km of the Sun’s surface—a level of detail never achieved before.
What makes the VTF special is how it handles sunlight. Using two high-precision interferometers, it breaks sunlight into hundreds of narrow bands, functioning like a powerful filter that creates hundreds of images per second. This lets scientists observe not just the light, but also the polarisation and movement of solar material.
By doing so, researchers can better understand the Sun’s intense magnetic fields and how they interact with super-hot plasma to cause solar flares and eruptions. These events don’t just affect space—they can disturb satellites, GPS, and power grids on Earth.
The VTF’s full science operations are expected to begin soon, delivering sharper and even more detailed insights into our closest star.
