Overview

• The Astrophysical Journal Letters published the DKIST team’s analysis on August 25, 2025, detailing observations from an August 8, 2024 X1.3 flare.
• Researchers measured 686 coronal loop strands with average widths near 48 kilometers and minima around 21 kilometers, approaching the telescope’s ~24-kilometer resolution limit.
• The imagery captured an area about four Earth diameters across and caught the flare in its decay phase, revealing dark, threadlike arches over bright flare ribbons.
• Inouye’s resolving power—more than double that of previous ground-based solar telescopes—enabled the first clear view of individual loop strands at the scales long targeted by theory.
• Scientists say these results can inform flare and space-weather modeling, while the idea that such loops are the fundamental building blocks of flare architecture remains a developing hypothesis.