Highest-ever resolution images of the Sun reveal its atmosphere is much more complex than previously thought

Newly released images of the Sun are the highest-resolution pictures of our star ever taken and they reveal its atmosphere is much more complex than first thought.

Scientists from the University of Central Lancashire and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center studied the images taken by the space-based NASA High-Resolution Coronal Imager telescope, the Daily Mail reports.

The pictures revealed that parts of the Sun's atmosphere, thought to be dark or mostly empty, are filled with strands of hot electrified gasses 311 miles wide. 

Each of those strands are up to 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit and are larger than the distance between London and Belfast, according to researchers.

NASA's Hi-C telescope can pick out structures in the Sun's atmosphere as small as 43 miles in size - or about 0.01 per cent of the total size of the star.

It was able to capture the incredibly fine magnetic threads in the 'dark areas' and scientists say they are made of extremely hot, million-degree plasma.

What exactly created these strands remains unclear, according to the Lancashire research team, although it will now become a focus for astronomers.

The Hi-C, the telescope that captured the images, is a unique astronomical telescope carried into space on a sub-orbital rocket flight. 

The telescope launches to the edge of space where it then captures images of the star every second before returning to Earth after five minutes. 

The international team of researchers behind the discovery and the telescope are now working on plans to launch the Hi-C rocket mission again.