DIY Photography

Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time

  • News
  • Inspiration
  • Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • DIY
  • Gear
Search

Submit A Story

Astrophotographer captures a half-million-mile long solar prominence

Oct 14, 2022 by Alex Baker Leave a Comment

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

An astrophotographer captured a half million-mile-long plasma plume as it shot out from the surface of the sun. The plume is known as a coronal mass ejection and was part of a minor solar storm. The image was created by capturing hundreds of thousands of images over several hours using a specially modified telescope.

The image was captured on September 24 by astrophotographer and Arizona resident Andrew McCarthy. His images are well known for their extraterrestrial beauty and fine attention to detail. But something about this image was different.

“Today the sun produced the largest coronal mass ejection I’ve ever witnessed,” McCarthy wrote on the subReddit r/space. “What you’re seeing here is the sun’s ‘chromosphere’ in Hydrogen-Alpha light,” he explains.

“This reveals the feathery spicules (plasma jets), filaments, and prominences. One such prominence (the long thing seen on the left side), snapped off, ejecting matter deep into space.”

He goes on to explain how he followed the plume and was astounded at how far it reached out into space. “I tracked it nearly a million miles out into space and will share a timelapse as soon as I’m done stabilizing the footage. This composite image shows how far the prominence reached before it snapped, far larger than any I’ve seen before,” he adds. Although McCarthy tracked the ejection to around a million miles, the one in the image is actually half of that length.

To create the image McCarthy stacked hundreds of thousands of images taken over a six-hour time frame. Between 30 and 80 images were captured every second. They were then stacked together to create the image above.

The colours, however, are actually more of an artist’s impression than reality. The chromosphere (the lowest region of the sun’s atmosphere) and CMEs naturally give off a type of light that looks pinkish-red to us and is known as hydrogen-alpha, or H-alpha, light. But because the exposure time of each image was so short, the original images were almost completely white.

McCarthy added the orange hues while compositing the final image, to create a more natural-looking impression of what our brains think of as sun colour.

These plasma plumes are becoming more frequent and more powerful as the sun is entering a new activity phase known as the solar maximum, which lasts around seven years. Solar storms are also responsible for the increased visibility of the auroras or Northern lights as they are known.

“We’ll see more of these as we head further into solar maximum,” McCarthy wrote. The plasma plumes are also likely to get “progressively larger,” he added. That means there will be plenty of opportunities for more images like this one to be captured.

However, McCarthy has some sage advice for anyone wanting to try this. “DO NOT point a telescope at the sun,” he says, “you’ll fry your camera or worse, your eyes. My telescope was specially modified with multiple filters for this.”

You can follow Andrew on Instagram or see his work on his website.

FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Related posts:

Astrophotographer captures James Webb telescope from 1 million kilometers away Astrophotographer captures rare image of STEVE over Canada Solar X action cam gets 6-hours of battery life from solar panels ESA Captures Total Solar Eclipse from Space

Filed Under: news Tagged With: Andrew McCarthy, Astrophotography, Solar Flare

About Alex Baker

Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

« AstrHori announces a low-budget $289 wide angle 40mm f/5.6 manual focus lens for Fuji GFX
3 out of 4 sleeping baby stock images promote dangerous environments »

Submit A Story

Get our FREE Lighting Book

DIYP lighting book cover

* download requires newsletter signup
DIYPhotography

Recent Comments

Free Resources

Advanced lighting book

Recent Posts

  • Canon is starting to let 3rd parties make RF mount lenses
  • Canon recalls some EOS R10 bodies over “loud noises”
  • Netflix sued for using unauthorized drone footage in advertisement
  • This massive 114-gigapixel virtual tour of Barcelona took three months to create
  • Canon EOS R3 facial recognition now knows who to focus on in a crowd

Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

Copyright © DIYPhotography 2006 - 2023 | About | Contact | Advertise | Write for DIYP | Full Disclosure | Privacy Policy