New footage of the Sun’s visible surface shows tiny swirling, vortex-like patterns in never-before-seen detail. Astronomers captured the highest-resolution images yet of the surface, showing continuously growing whirls of hot plasma - which is large on a human scale, but small on the scale of a stellar surface. Diameters range from around 12 miles (19 km), the minimum scale detectable by the world's most powerful solar telescope, up to around 100 miles (170 km). The US National Science Foundation's Hawaii-based Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope was used to make the discovery. According to researchers, the swirls could help explain how energy builds up on the sun and triggers solar flares and eruptions.