The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, located on the summit of Haleakalā on the island of Maui, Hawaii, captured the sharpest-ever images of the sun's surface.

The images show ultra-fine bright and dark stripes (called striations) in the thin, gaseous layer of the sun's atmosphere known as the photosphere, according to a statement from the National Solar Observatory (NSO), which operates the solar telescope.

"In this work, we investigate the fine-scale structure of the solar surface for the first time with an unprecedented spatial resolution of just about 20 kilometers [12.4 miles], or the length of Manhattan Island," David Kuridze, lead author of the study and a NSO scientists, said in the statement. "These striations are the fingerprints of fine-scal

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