Sun's surface seen in remarkable new detail (video)

Behold the Sun's convulsing surface at a level of detail never seen before!

The Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope on Hawaii has released pictures that show features as small as 30km across.

This is remarkable when set against the scale of our star, which has a diameter of about 1.4 million km and is 149 million km from Earth, BBC reports.

The cell-like structures are roughly the size of the US state of Texas. They are convecting masses of hot, excited gas, or plasma.

The bright centres are where this solar material is rising; the surrounding dark lanes are where plasma is cooling and sinking.

DKIST is a brand new facility positioned atop Haleakalā, a 3,000m-high volcano on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

Its 4m primary mirror is the world's largest for a solar telescope.

The observatory will be used to study the workings of the Sun. Scientists want fresh insights on its dynamic behaviour in the hope that they can forecast better its energetic outbursts - what is often referred to as "space weather".

Colossal emissions of charged particles and entrained magnetic fields have been known to damage satellites at Earth, to harm astronauts, degrade radio communications, and even to knock power grids offline.