A U.S. federally funded solar physics center operating multiple ground-based telescopes and networks.
Scientists have captured the Sun’s surface at unprecedented resolution with the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope and other instruments and have identified widespread Kelvin–Helmholtz vortices—500–2,000km spirals of magnetised plasma. The team has linked these instabilities to how magnetic energy cascades to smaller scales and feeds flares and coronal mass ejections that produce space weather.
A total solar eclipse on 12 August 2026 has passed across Greenland, Iceland and parts of northern Spain while the UK and Ireland have seen a deep partial eclipse — the most extensive visible from Britain since 1999. Scientists have collected coronagraph and in‑flight data to study the Sun’s corona and short‑term atmospheric effects; safety warnings about direct viewing were widely issued.