An astrophotographer has captured a 286 megapixel image of the sun during the most intense period of solar activity in decades.
The image shows huge fireballs circulating on the surface of the sun and can be magnified to see the entire burning mass in extreme detail.
Andrew McCarthy, known to his online followers as @ cosmic-background, took the photos through a telescope last week, taking care not to be blinded by the harsh rays.
The high definition image is a mosaic of about 50 tiles, each consisting of 600 layered photos.
The photographer has been pointing his telescope at the sun for three years and says it is currently the “most active I’ve ever seen.”
The sun appears to be entering a particularly active period of its 11-year business cycle, which began in 2019 and is expected to peak in 2025.
It is producing solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), powerful bursts of energy that can lead dangerous explosions to Earth.
American astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy chose 30,000 photos to create a mosaic image capturing the sun in high definition from Florence, Arizona, USA
The image captures dark spots, known as active regions, on the surface of the sun, as well as bright sunspots that explode from the fireball.
The “spongy” areas of the outer extremity are plasma bags trapped in the magnetic field, with lighter areas, known as “filaments” spread across the rest of the sun.
Andrew said: “Seeing the full sun at this level of detail is probably not something many people have ever seen in their lives.
“During a period of intense solar activity, the sun will look like this all the time. This image is more of a signal that the 11-year cycle is approaching the peak of its activity.
“Reviewing 100,000 photos by hand was the most tedious part of the final image.
“For most of the process, I didn’t even know I would have a decent image at the end. I was grateful when it came out as well as it did. ‘
Andrew individually selected the 30,000 photos that make up the final image from a stack of 100,000.
The image captures dark spots, known as active regions, on the surface of the sun, as well as bright sunspots that explode from the fireball.
WHAT ARE CORONAL MASS EJECTIONS?
Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are large clouds of plasma and magnetic field that rise from the sun.
These clouds can erupt in any direction, and then continue in that direction, plowing through the solar wind.
These clouds only cause impacts on the Earth when they are directed at the Earth.
They tend to be much slower than solar flares, as they move more matter.
CMEs can be activated when a storm on the surface of the sun causes a vortex to form at the base of plasma loops projecting from the surface.
These loops are called prominences and when they become unstable they can break, releasing the CME into space.
The solar chromosphere, a layer of the solar atmosphere, can be seen as a very thin layer of hydrogen alpha light due to the fact that Andrew’s telescope is precisely tuned with a 5-inch refractor.
The most “spongy” areas of the outer extremity are plasma bags trapped in the magnetic field, known as prominences, with lighter areas, known as filaments, scattered throughout the rest of the sun.
From these come sunspots, flares, and coronal mass ejections, capable of frying the Earth’s surface if they get close enough.
It was processed in false color due to the filters that Andrew had to use to photograph such a bright subject.
The two filters he used with his specialized telescope, in order to prevent a fire, and the photographer who went blind.
The colors are also partially reversed – which is why sunspots appear dark – in order to visualize the prominences.
Andrew captured the masterpiece through a telescope in his backyard in Florence, Arizona, USA.
“I spent about four hours capturing the sun that day, most of which was spent capturing the two-hour timelapse of sunspots,” he said.
“The sun was shining for about 45 minutes, but it took several days to process.
“It was very windy that day, so I had to go in and manually remove the bad pictures where the wind had blown me down.”
The photographer did a photoshop on an image of the Earth next to the sun to scale
The sun is 864,400 miles (1,391,000 kilometers) in diameter, about 109 times the diameter of the Earth. The star is so large that it can hold about 1,300,000 Earth planets.
Andrew McCarthy required a specialized telescope with two filters, in order to prevent a fire, and go blind. Filters meant that the colors in the photos were partially inverted
In December, Andrew captured what he described as the “clearest photo of the sun ever.”
He layered 150,000 individual images of the sun to convey the intricate detail of the largest star in the solar system.
Everything can be seen in the huge final 300 megapixel image, 30 times larger than a standard 10 megapixel camera image.
Despite his actions, Andrew is willing to urge others not to look directly at the sun unless they have specialized equipment.
He said, “Don’t point a telescope at the sun unless you know what you’re doing.”
“Seeing a lot of activity in the sun is always exciting for me as an amateur solar astronomer, and it represents an opportunity to share something new with my audience on social media.
“That’s why I’m always so excited to see something new. These images were especially hard to come by because of the conditions, so getting them out as well as they did was exciting.”
Andrew McCarthy layered 150,000 individual images of the sun to convey the intricate detail of the largest star in the solar system in December 2021
The dark spots in the images are actually reversed by the photographic process and are actually very bright high energy areas of the flaming star.
According to a model from physicists at the University of Warwick and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the current solar cycle will be one of the few ever observed.
The solar cycle is a solar activity cycle of approximately 11 years driven by the sun’s magnetic field, measured in terms of variations in the number of sunspots.
Scientists predicted that we would observe a maximum number of sunspots between 210 and 260 in the solar cycle 25, which began in December 2019.
It means the sun may be producing more electrons and protons than before, making solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) more frequent than in the last decade.
Our star has been experiencing intense activity for a few months and last month triggered its most powerful solar flare seen in five years.
Scientists are concerned that increased solar activity could lead to a potentially dangerous solar climate that could damage power grids, remove satellites and damage astronauts and space equipment on the International Space Station.
THE SUN: THE BASICS
The sun is the star in the heart of the Solar System, an almost perfect sphere of hot plasma, which radiates energy.
Three-quarters of the star is made of hydrogen, followed by helium, oxygen, carbon, neon, and iron.
It is a G-type main sequence star and is sometimes called a yellow dwarf.
The Sun formed from the gravitational collapse of matter in a large molecular cloud that gathered at the center.
The rest flattened into an orbiting disk that formed everything else.
Facts and figures
Name: Sol
Known planets: eight
Spectral type: G2
Distance: 2.7 × 10 ^ 17 km
Mass: 1.9885 × 10 ^ 30 kg
Radius: 696,342 km
Brightness: 3,828 × 10 ^ 26 W
Temperature: 9,929 F
Age: 4.6 billion years