New telescope images show characteristic swirls of magnetized plasma across a 19-kilometer-wide patch of the sun’s surface. The images also provide evidence for a type of fluid instability that might explain the sun’s outbursts, such as solar flares and eruptions. “This instability occurs everywhere at the boundaries of solar magnetic elements,” says astrophysicist David Kuridze of the National Solar Observatory headquartered in Boulder, Colo. Solar magnetic elements are regions of highly magnetized plasma on the sun’s surface. Understanding how magnetic structures on the sun’s surface transfer energy in fluidlike motion could provide insights into how solar activity develops.