Researchers led by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan used the balloon-borne Sunrise-III solar observatory to observe the Sun during a 2024 stratospheric flight. They found unexpectedly intricate magnetic structures above regions where the Sun appeared quiet.
Quiet-sun regions may look uneventful, but the observations show that their magnetic fields can be more intricate than expected. This means the Sun is not magnetically simple outside obvious sunspots, giving researchers a fuller baseline for understanding how magnetic complexity is arranged across the Sun.
✦ Quiet parts of the Sun can still have intricate magnetic fields.