Astronomers uncover a mysterious magnetic web above the Sun

The Sun’s seemingly peaceful regions are hiding a surprisingly complex magnetic world. Using a balloon-borne telescope high above Earth, scientists discovered delicate, thread-like magnetic structures woven through the solar atmosphere, apparently shaped by twisting motions on the Sun’s surface. They also mapped magnetic fields inside towering jets of solar material, revealing how those fields change with height.

Astronomers uncover a mysterious magnetic web above the Sun. The thin, thread-like magnetic structures detected by SCIP are reproduced in the simulation as twisted magnetic field lines (enlarged view inside the circle at the lower left). Using the Sunrise-III solar observatory, which traveled high into Earth’s stratosphere aboard a balloon in 2024, an international research team led by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) discovered intricate, thread-like magnetic features that had previously been difficult to observe.

The findings reveal that even the Sun’s seemingly quiet regions contain elaborate magnetic structures. They also offer new clues to how energy travels upward through the solar atmosphere and contributes to its heating. A Hidden Web of Magnetic Threads Above the Sun Sunrise-III detected many thin, elongated magnetic structures woven into a larger network of magnetic fields above a quiet region of the Sun.