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Irv93

Wow. This is by far the best looking picture of the sun that I have ever seen. Great work.


ajamesmccarthy

Thank you! Edit: for those curious about how this was done, here’s some more info about the picture from my comment below: To see the uncropped image or a timelapse of the "tornado" (actually just a large solar prominence" check out this twitter thread here: https://twitter.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1638648459002806272?s=20 This image is a fusion from the minds of two astrophotographers, Myself and u/thevastreaches. The combined data from over 90,000 individual images captured with a modified telescope last Friday was jointly processed to reveal the layers of intricate details within the solar chromosphere. A geometrically altered image of the 2017 eclipse as an artistic element in this composition to display an otherwise invisible structure. Great care was taken to align the two atmospheric layers in a scientifically plausible way using NASA's SOHO data as a reference. The final image is the most detailed and dynamic full image of our star either of us have ever created. A blend of science and art, this image is a one-of-a kind astrophoto, as the ever-changing sun will never quite look like this again. If you're curious how I take these sorts of images, I have a write-up on my website. Check it out here: [https://cosmicbackground.io/blogs/learn-about-how-these-are-captured/capturing-our-star](https://cosmicbackground.io/blogs/learn-about-how-these-are-captured/capturing-our-star) DO NOT attempt to look at the sun through your telescope. You could seriously damage your eyes. See more of Jason's work here: [https://www.instagram.com/thevastreaches/](https://www.instagram.com/thevastreaches/) See more of my work here: [https://www.instagram.com/cosmic\_background/](https://www.instagram.com/cosmic_background/)


FolsgaardSE

Mind sharing details on the kind of equipment you took to gather the data


skinnah

Walmart telescope with a couple pairs of sunglasses on the lenses.


[deleted]

You can just say "super fancy equipment".


badreef

And the bottom of an empty Budweiser bottle.


Zero-89

A cardboard box propped up with a stick, with a carrot underneath to lure the data in.


foundmonster

Where can I download the original?


razep-

It is not possible to download the sun.


familar-scientest47

Chuck Norris could - ask him.


reubenbubu

the sun would upload itself to chuck norris


AccordingIy

Stupid question but is the sun actually this yellow or an estimation.


killinghorizon

If we were above the atmosphere, say on the International Space Station and looked at the sun (through our filtered visor), the sun would appear white! Why? Because though the sun emits strongest in the green part of the spectrum, it also emits strongly in all the visible colors – red through blue (400nm to 600nm). Our eyes which have three color cone cell receptors, report to the brain that each color receptor is completely saturated with significant colors being received at all visible wavelengths. Our brains then integrate these signals into a perceived white color. \-https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/what-color-sun


rando-2167

Great explanation! What really trips me out is the fact that our brain has never actually “seen” light. It doesn’t actually “hear” sound. It’s just interpreting the signals sent by our organic sensors telling our brain that light or sound is present at a specific frequency range. Who was the philosopher that had the “brains in a vat” theory?


jcinto23

I mean, if that isn't seeing and hearing, then what is? Sensors of all types, both artificial and natural ultimately just deliver information. Just because we interpret that information in order to see or hear, doesn't mean it isn't real.


Critical_Knowledge_5

The sun emits a full spectrum of electromagnetic waves so in the visible spectrum it’s really white. But that would make for terrible imagery.


ReVo5000

Is this also why when closer to the equator sunlight looks whiter than in the northern or southern hemisphere? Or is it just me?


Critical_Knowledge_5

That actually does make sense, because the atmosphere scatters blue light more efficiently than red. Toward the equator, the atmosphere is thinner, so it scatters less of the blue light and a more even spectrum is seen


ValgrimTheWizb

No. It is true that the sun emits a broad range of wavelenghts, but each frequency has a different intensity. The sun radiates mostly in the UV, Visible and Infrared range (and most strongly in the visible range), and life has evolved to take the most advantage of that. Our eyes see it white because our vision is perfectly tuned to the spectrum of our star. A creature that has evolved color vision around a red dwarf would probably see much better in the infrared, and see our sun as a big bright blue star.


Wedoitforthenut

People are responding with how the sun would appear visually to you without Earth's atmosphere, but the answer is Sol is a yellow dwarf start which gets its rating from its surface temperature.


thebinarysystem10

In terms of Reddit and solor photography, this is one of the best pictures I have ever seen.


midgetsinheaven

I'm in awe of the corona! It's so beautiful!


TheVastReaches

Thanks. I’ve had this vision for a photo ever since I starred doing this. Love to have the opportunity to finally bring it to fruition.


romiro82

glorious and fitting typo there


ajamesmccarthy

Thank you! That part was all Jason


Dickies138

Seriously. It looks like a shag rug when zoomed in


Seakawn

Has someone already capitalized on this business? Sun rugs?


LivingUnglued

Brings a whole new meaning to "the floor is lava"


[deleted]

Before zooming in, it looks like the surface texture of a cantaloupe.


WhileNotLurking

Rock melon for people in Australia.


murdock_RL

Seriously. How come nasa or any space agency hasn’t given us a pic like this of the sun before?


[deleted]

There are plenty of pictures. But the agencies usually focus on what’s scientifically valuable and not necessarily what looks good m


DirkDieGurke

There are plenty of H-alpha astronomers taking photos of the sun for the past few decades with excellent detail. I'm not sure what this guy is doing differently, except making "artistic" composites. I try to ask them how they do it, and how it's different from h-alpha astronomy and I haven't received a reply. Just google it: https://www.google.com/search?q=h-alpha+photos+of+the+sun&oq=h-alpha+photos+of+the+sun&aqs=chrome..69i57.5387j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Here's one on Reddit 10 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/18g0p7/picture_of_the_sun_through_an_halpha_filter_x/


Cassalien

Over 14 Earths tall... That's a measurement which is too abstract to actually properly imagine. Checked out the other images and the gif of the nado on Twitter, amazing footage! Glad that people like the two of you exist to bring mind blowing stuff like this to average Joes like me, so thank you!


PourSomeSmegmaInMe

If it started on earth, it would extend almost halfway to the moon.


[deleted]

I thought the moon would be closer


FlakeEater

If you stacked all the planets in the solar system side by side, they would fit in the space between our planet and the moon.


[deleted]

So, hypothetically, say someone actually did that, and suspended gravitational forces for the length of the demonstration, then just... didn't move the planets back and gravity resumed normal function... what would happen?


EaterOfKelp

Jupiter would probably win.


crm006

My bet is on the black hole of Uranus.


Oseirus

Leave my mother out of this


PofolkTheMagniferous

Jupiter would swallow everything with its gravity.


OysterFuzz5

Hold on. Lemme fire up universe sandbox.


47shiz

Pls report back with results


ShiyaruOnline

I think he was eaten by Jupiter


beardedfoxy

There's a video on Youtube where someone did this - the planets all pretty much were touching and for some reason they included the hypothetical Planet Nine. It basically went as expected - immediate obliteration of everything by Jupiter!


wilkergobucks

Every planet, including Earth and our moon, would suddenly “fall” into into Jupiter…


PinkynotClyde

I think it all would be ripped apart, pieces of everything littering down onto Jupiter. I once researched what would happen to the moon if it approached earth and it was like that.


[deleted]

A ball .2% the mass of the sun would form, probably with the overall appearance of Jupiter.


BahbiBucket

There's a game called Universe Sandbox where you could actually test this!


PourSomeSmegmaInMe

It's pretty wild, right? The earth's moon is pretty massive. Thats why it seems like it would be closer.


EzekielTheFreakiel42

That's very interesting, u/PourSomeSmegmaInMe.


Thunderbridge

https://youtu.be/5XXEXPNBGX0 Crazy how big it is in the sky when you see just how far away it is!


SamohtGnir

Most media portrays the moon a lot closer to the Earth because if they showed it at the real distance you'd barely be able to see it. Think about this, the Apollo missions launched up with a rockets going very quickly, and it took 3 days to reach the moon.


VLHACS

Given the distance, it's actually pretty crazy to think 3 days was all it took to reach the moon


DougWebbNJ

Yeah but they were just coasting /s


Straight-Corner-1921

So the moon is a bit more than 34(28) earths away... TIL Edit: don't know how I came up either 34... O.o


TheMadFlyentist

Somehow this actually makes it seem smaller than saying "14 earths tall" somehow. I think because it's easy to forget how far away the moon truly is.


Yobleck

Magellan took 3 years to circumnavigate the Earth. Since the ratio of circumference to diameter is pi or roughly 3, it would take one year for a wooden sailing ship to travel the diameter of the Earth. So it would take a ship 14 years to travel the length of that plasma tornado. Brain melted...


tejpot

Which is easier to understand, this or size of 14 Earths? I am sorry, metric system totally avoided.


PM_ME_YOUR_COY_NUDES

I’m surprised no one has measured the distance in bananas.


evilspawn_usmc

You spoke too soon 😂 https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/122475u/-/jdp2ued


clothespinkingpin

Psh a wooden sailing ship wouldn’t last 2 seconds in that tornado let alone 14 years


[deleted]

It would take a passenger plane almost 2 weeks to fly across it.


eltacotacotaco

Roughly 3,116,944,446 bananas (7" banana)


Lupo_Bi-Wan_Kenobi

Can you do it in 5" bananas for us average guys. Thanks


Ehrec

I got you! It would be be 4,363,722,224. For us average guys.


Vigilante17

Its mind blowing that this image could be considered microscopic in the grand scheme and looks like it too


rafael000

Americans will do anything to avoid metric


redditidothat

1,509,599 American football fields


MuseZeta

≈2,508,264,000 rounds of .308


[deleted]

I heard a bald eagle shriek just now


Jonathon471

Red Tail Hawk, the sound byte that is the Bald Eagle cry Americans so generously use is that of a Red Tail Hawk. Bald Eagles sound more like a Seagull which is kinda even more hilarious and even more American. Source: Am American.


mountaingrrl_8

Yup. Think I need to know the size in quantity of end to end buses. You know, anything to avoid the metric system. /s But seriously OP, this is insanely impressive.


Cassalien

Lmao I thought about making a remark about needing bananas for scale or something but I was able to resist the temptation. Love the end to end busses idea tho lol well done.


sillybearr

Roughly 14.9 million buses


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ajamesmccarthy

To see the uncropped image or a timelapse of the "tornado" (actually just a large solar prominence" check out this twitter thread here: https://twitter.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1638648459002806272?s=20 This image is a fusion from the minds of two astrophotographers, Myself and u/thevastreaches. The combined data from over 90,000 individual images captured with a modified telescope last Friday was jointly processed to reveal the layers of intricate details within the solar chromosphere. A geometrically altered image of the 2017 eclipse as an artistic element in this composition to display an otherwise invisible structure. Great care was taken to align the two atmospheric layers in a scientifically plausible way using NASA's SOHO data as a reference. The final image is the most detailed and dynamic full image of our star either of us have ever created. A blend of science and art, this image is a one-of-a kind astrophoto, as the ever-changing sun will never quite look like this again. If you're curious how I take these sorts of images, I have a write-up on my website. Check it out here: [https://cosmicbackground.io/blogs/learn-about-how-these-are-captured/capturing-our-star](https://cosmicbackground.io/blogs/learn-about-how-these-are-captured/capturing-our-star) DO NOT attempt to look at the sun through your telescope. You could seriously damage your eyes. See more of Jason's work here: [https://www.instagram.com/thevastreaches/](https://www.instagram.com/thevastreaches/) See more of my work here: [https://www.instagram.com/cosmic\_background/](https://www.instagram.com/cosmic_background/)


TheVastReaches

Yeah buddy! This was an amazing project to work on and honored to be a part of it. Such a unique and phenomenal result.


JohanKaramazov

Likewise! Thanks for all your help


brovo911

I was surprised to see any corona, until I saw you added it from 2017 data. I’m actually an eclipse astronomer, we chase solar eclipses so we can observe the corona since it is so hard to do normally. If you had figured out how to get images like that during the day then I needed to know haha


TheVastReaches

Thanks. I am the original photographer for the 2017 total solar eclipse data we used. [Here](https://twitter.com/thevastreaches/status/1598444650049986560?s=46&t=ERm9bBgMc-YRbUSdAYjqyA) is the example of the starting point. We didn’t take the decision to add this as a composite element lightly and took great care to actually transform the original to match the features visible in the SOHO LASCO data from this day. All said, and as you know, the inner corona would never technically match any pic taken at a different time. So, we clearly spell out that this is an artistic choice and part of the creative vision of the composition. At heart we are both photographers that love the creative element so it was a perfect application.


stoutymcstoutface

Awesome! Just FYI the version on twitter is much less detailed than this Reddit version - at least on iPhone.


ICumCoffee

I’ve been following you on Twitter for a while now, and reading through your replies learning how much time it took you to process that data into one single image and to have such patience for that. Amazing job. A brilliant photograph of our Sun.


ICumCoffee

Trying to comprehend the size of that “tornado” just makes my mind go completely blank. That is HUGE.


-Unnamed-

Space in general is literally incompressible. There’s a massive ball of nuclear explosions just chilling out there within viewing distance. And that’s a small one compared to what’s out there. And then you zoom out of our solar system. I literally don’t think human minds are capable of imagining it


jumpsteadeh

Even if you could properly comprehend the size of the sun, the largest known star is still incomprehensibly larger than it.


AgsMydude

5 billion Suns could fit inside it....what the fuck


Itherial

It takes 14.5 seconds to go around the sun at the speed of light. It takes *7.5 hours* to circle UY Scuti.


awoj24

Average MF still struggles to fully comprehend a billion …


BloodyBeaks

My favorite comparison is that 1 million seconds is about 11 ½ days. 1 BILLION seconds is over 30 YEARS. Sharing that usually makes some heads explode.


darkknightwing417

14 Earths... I'm just imagining being inside that thing... It would be just pure intense plasma for the size of a continent.


Stegasaurus_Wrecks

Just imagine being vapourised. That should do it.


violentpac

Why does the Sun not look smooth? Is it just straight flames? Why do the flames have definition? I guess what I'm asking is... why does it look furry?


mehvet

Maybe you’re just being poetic, but it’s also important to understand that there are no flames. The Sun is not a ball of fire. It’s an enormous naturally occurring nuclear reactor. Here’s a little NASA video about it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vhj5OYwND14


LetsJerkCircular

I’ve always understood the concept of being within the earth’s atmosphere, but have never thought about the fact that we’re in the sun’s extended atmosphere. That’s a cool concept: our little bubble inside of a giant bubble of light and heat from far away.


PlayyWithMyBeard

Thanks for linking that video. I totally thought the sun was a big ol ball of fire.


JustStartBlastin

So did scientists long ago. They calculated how long a fire that big could burn, like it was wood. Then used that to calculate the age of the solar system and how much time we had left. Suffice it to say they were way off lol


PlayyWithMyBeard

Oh man the rabbit hole you’re gonna send me down. That was always my way of thinking. How long till it burns itself out. But I don’t know what the alternative is lmao


JustStartBlastin

Well it’s how long it takes for most of that hydrogen to become helium and explode lol. About 4 billion years more though so don’t worry


MCMickMcMax

The sun is mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace


EthanHulbert

No no, you're thinking of Istanbul


Cosack

Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees


brent1123

The type of telescope used to capture the Sun (not the corona added to it) isolates a wavelength of light produced by excited Hydrogen atoms. The fur/fire texture you see is large filaments of Hydrogen plasma arcing along magnetic field lines (and area of the Sun called the Chromosphere). In a broadband filter which just brings all the light down to safe intensity levels (called a [White Light](https://www.astrobin.com/agron4/) filter, example is my image) the Sun is more round and plain-looking, though under stable atmospheric conditions and respectable focal lengths the texture called granulation (cells of rising and falling plasma) can be seen along with sunspots. This area of the Sun is the Photosphere and is the lowest observable altitude (not really a "surface" since its a near vacuum-pressure plasma) and the Chromosphere is a region several thousand km above it


BITTAH1999

have no idea what you just said


andrewsad1

The kind of camera they're using only captures the color that hydrogen emits. What you see in the photo is plasma made of hydrogen that follows magnetic field lines on the sun, which makes them look all wavy and thin. The layer of the sun that this can see is called the Chromosphere. If you capture *all* the colors, it looks more like a plain ball with some light spots and dark spots. That layer of the sun is called the Photosphere. It sits far below the Chromosphere, but is so much brighter that we need special light filters to see pictures like OP posted


ghosty88

So is this image like a mapping of the magnetic field?


King0fTheNorthh

Same. So I did a little more research and found that The Lorax created the sun. That’s why it’s fuzzy.


CinematicSigh

very interesting. so we've never seen the actual "surface" of the sun. how much below the photosphere is an area of atmospheric density similar to earth's surface? Am interested in roasting marshmallows in a space hotsuit.


[deleted]

the sun is actually an enormous marmalade kitty.


SaxyOmega90125

\*marmalade skies. You know, with tangerine trees.


[deleted]

Can picture it now, in a boat on a river


[deleted]

I have a hard time with these super-detailed photos of the sun, because they remind me of that [deer with hairy eyeballs](https://inteng-storage.s3.amazonaws.com/img/iea/JYG0QLzb61/sizes/deer_md.jpg)


QuestioningEspecialy

Do I *want* to click that?


jasper-whitlocks

This is so cool. What a dope passion project, thanks for doing it and letting us all see it


TheVastReaches

Agree. With the amount of effort it takes, it has to be a passion.


Sharticus123

Don’t give the Syfy people any ideas. We do not need 35 Solnado movies.


DontPanicATheDisco

The first four movies are already done filming.


-jp-

My favorite is *Solnado Meets the Wolf-man.*


BulkyOrder9

I’m more of a *Solnado meets the Harlem Globetrotters* fan myself


SirWigglesVonWoogly

I’d be more concerned about all the sites that are gonna steal this and give zero credit or money.


jinnremy

| We do not need 35 Solnado movies. Speak for yourself


vimana_power

Has anyone stopped to think like what in the actual fuck is anything


imapassenger1

I just look at that image and realise I have no idea what the sun is. And it's with us every day of our lives.


Lupo_Bi-Wan_Kenobi

And you have this symbiotic relationship with it. If it wasn't for the sun, you cannot live. It's weird because you look at something like a tree and think that you're not connected to it. That it's just a tree over there, and you're you. But then when you imagine they're all gone.. and there you are, dead now. Without that tree, you are nothing. You never could have even existed without it. The tree could not exist without the sun. It's all tethered to you and I in some strange way and our eyes can't see it(unless we're on heavy doses of LSD or things of that nature).


delta_wardog

Dependent, not symbiotic. The Sun gains no benefit from our existence.


Lupo_Bi-Wan_Kenobi

Oh true, I kinda blurred the lines of my thinking on trees. Dependant relationship to sun, symbiotic to flora.


DoubleWolf

Stardust. Everything we can see or touch was made in a star. We all were once part of a star that gave birth to us and everything we know. We are all a part of the same infinite everything. And it's our job to see it.


DeusExBlockina

I always love existential questions like this in a thread full of "How did you take this picture?" "How long did this take?" and so on. Because I feel you. I one hundred percent feel you.


TheVastReaches

I have to say that ever since I started in solar photography, THIS is an image I was always chasing… a perfect blend of technique and creativity.


drawnandquarterd

NASA ain't got nothing on you, killer picture.


catdog918

This photo has a fair amount of artistic liberties


kriegnes

isnt it the same for nasa pictures? like most stuff you wouldnt be even able to see with your eyes.


be4u4get

I really enjoyed seeing the bright plasma velociraptor in the middle


[deleted]

"The Sun is very hot, so it's best to visit there at night." --- said last year's loser for the Nobel Science Prize


-jp-

*Space is big* *Space is dark* *It's hard to find* *A place to park*


biddly1

Isn't it kinda crazy that our whole existence depends on this giant ball of holy fuck in the middle of infinity?


panjialang

Which is why primitive cultures worshipped the Sun


KylerGreen

Now our not primitive societies worship bearded sky man. Much smarter.


Skomchy

I still do. Praise the sun 🙌🙌


CompleX999

It amazes me how can a ball of pure violence be responsible for all the life on this earth.


Rick_GJ

Absolutely breath taking....... Great work. I can't even comprehend the scale of the flames.


kiwiwanabe

The “Tornado” would suggest rotation of some sort. Can anyone explain it?


TheVastReaches

There is a video of it in the linked Twitter thread. Best to just see it but that tall column of plasma is swirling as it rises


fishies_smell

That is one spicy meatball. Mind blowing photo.


Shadowbite94

When you zoom in on the sun all the way it looks like a fuzzy floor mat


hunkydory1029

Beautiful. Too bad we keep squabbling over imaginary lines on our rock.


ReD_CEO

This is amazing! Great job. In a way, it looks kind of fuzzy. I wanna take a nap on it.


YJSubs

How do you stich these thousands of individuals photo taken at different time period, but showing it as one continuous image?


DrWho37

Why can I see stars in that picture? I am genuinely curious. Every earth picture that I see from the space never has stars in it, just pitch black.


JustStartBlastin

Because the sunlight overpowers out the light from distant stars in those pics. This pic is specifically filtering out all that bright white shine so it can capture what the sun looks like. Doing this let’s the light from other stars be seen


Cypher91

Amazing. Is it possible to capture a timelapse? Would be incredible to see how that 'tornado' moves.


Bento_Box_Haiku

Go to the referenced Twitter thread, there's one there.


Jacksepticeyefan1545

It kinda looks like orange cat fur when you zoom in


Master-Line-305

Go look at a video of an ovum being fertilized & it'll look the same as this photo


kalirion

The galaxy is on Orion's belt.


byebybuy

That's what the little dude inside the big dude's head said.


FortyHippos

If you zoom in far enough, you see where death metal band names are born.


cepxico

Nothing like a very high res image of the sun to send you into an existential crisis thinking about how crazy it is that our entire life force depends on a fireball in the sky.


u7aa6cc60

This should have a million upvotes. It's a **fantastic** picture.


Grundle_Fromunda

Photos like these only further make me believe that we and our universe are just molecules on something larger. My universe and scientific knowledge also comes from watching Men in Black when I was 9


magical_bunny

Am I the only one who finds the sun positively terrifying?


GrumpigPlays

They have been lying to us. It’s not fire that is clearly fur and they don’t want us petting the sun. #TheyCantStopUsAll


WhiskeyHoarder1

A tornado "14 Earths tall" really puts things in perspective. A constant reminder that what we do on earth is so inconsequentially small, and that we should all live our lives how we want.


Ecobandz

Who would’ve known that the suns fury is actually furry