A giant million-mile-long plume from the Sun’s surface has been captured by an astrophotographer: The stunning image shows a bright stream of plasma traveling at 100,000 mph as it blasts into space.
- An amateur astrophotographer took more than a million pictures of the sun in six hours
- A solar storm began, resulting in the largest solar bulge he had ever witnessed.
- A plume of plasma began to form from the bulge, which grew to about a million miles long, then broke off and flew off into space until it disappeared.
Advertising
An amateur astrophotographer pointed his telescope at the sun and observed a plume rising from the fiery surface at a speed of 100,000 miles per hour when it was more than a million miles long.
Andrew McCarthywho lives ArizonaHe told DailyMail.com that he spent six hours snapping more than a million photos, which he “stitched” together for the final image – but because the plume was so large, he was only able to capture half of it in the photo.
The energetic and highly magnetized, superheated gas, or coronal mass ejection (CME), unleashed what McCarthy said was the largest solar bulge he had ever witnessed — a bright feature stretching outward from the surface about 500,000 miles across.
On the same day McCarthy observed the sun, a small solar storm flared up on the sun, causing a large bulge to form that caught his attention.
“I saw a big boom start to rise – a clear sign that something exciting was about to happen,” he said.
So I aimed my telescope [at] and looked at the CME form.
“These are the moments solar astronomers live for.”
Andrew McCarthy captured a giant plume rising from the sun. The plasma stream stretched nearly a million miles. The incident happened during a small solar storm
The giant plume formed on September 24, the day the solar storm erupted on the sun.
However, the storm is in the lowest category and may have been missed by eyes on Earth.
It began to emerge from a giant shell of a plasma plume and then broke off and flew into space at about 100,000 miles per hour. live tweeted measure.
The images were taken using a modified five-inch refractor telescope, which McCarthy said needed to be modified because pointing a telescope at the sun would otherwise blind you.
The plume slowly began to grow, reaching 200,000 miles, then 600,000, and reaching more than a million locations and out into space.
“This is the distance from Earth to JWST [Jame Webb Space Telescope]”, he shared in his tweet.
McCarthy, who is there gallery stunning visuals of the wonders of space, he kept his eyes on the plume for at least two hours, watching it break away and fly off into space, where it became not a roaring ball of superheated gas, but rather a moon-sized blob. was
And the farther he went, the weaker he became.
McCarthy told DailyMail.com that the glory you see in the photo is about 500,000 miles, maybe a little less.
McCarthy took more than a million pictures of the sun and stitched them together for the final piece. I watched the plume grow until it broke off and flew off into space. Pictured is the raw image I took
This is easy to imagine when you realize that the Sun is 865,000 miles across!
“The little bits I followed in my live tweets were a million miles away, but they didn’t make it into the final photo.”
McCarthy went on to explain that because so many images were used, he incorporated a technique called “lucky imaging” into his shots.
“I use the TIFF format (a video format that many astrophotographers use) because I think it gives me more control to reject bad shots when the wind is blowing or when I see conditions getting worse,” he said.
Our atmosphere sometimes makes things difficult.”
Advertising
