Astronomers have successfully captured a photograph of the Sun while looking straight through the solid mass of the Earth at night. This extraordinary feat was accomplished by detecting elusive, ghost-like subatomic particles known as neutrinos rather than capturing standard light.
Deep within the Sun’s core, an ongoing nuclear fusion process produces these particles in unimaginable quantities. While ordinary light takes thousands of years to escape the dense solar interior, neutrinos travel outward at nearly the speed of light, passing through almost all physical matter entirely unimpeded.To capture this invisible phenomenon, researchers utilize the Super-Kamiokande observatory, a massive tank of ultra-pure water buried a kilometer underground in Japan. On the rare occasion that a solar neutrino collides with a water molecule, it produces a microscopic flash of light. By meticulously recording the direction of these flashes over hundreds of days, scientists compiled a pixelated map that points directly back to the active core of our star.This remarkable achievement represents a major leap in astrophysics. It provides definitive proof of the active nuclear furnace powering our solar system and grants us the unprecedented ability to look directly into the center of the Sun.
Source:- APOD: Neutrinos in the Sun,Image Credit: R. Svoboda and K. Gordan (LSU)
I wondered when this would be done. A bit surprised it happened in 1998.