By Dean Murray

The clearest pictures ever taken of a solar flare have been taken by the world's largest solar telescope.

Record-breaking images from the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii reveal a flare four times the diameter of Earth in the highest resolution ever.

The coronal loops seen within the flare are very fine strands averaging about 48.2 kilometers (approximately 30 miles) wide, with some loops as narrow as 21 kilometers (about 13 miles), the smallest coronal loops ever imaged.

The observations could reshape how we understand the Sun’s magnetic architecture and improve space weather forecasting.

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), who operate the telescope, said: "This marks a potential breakthrough in resolving the fundamental scale of solar coronal

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