Recent solar activity
Recent solar activity
Hello all,
I thought I would share some images of the recent increase in solar activity.
The sunspots in these images are all bigger than the Earth and have been responsible for some recent solar flares, but thankfully not in our direction.
IMG_9218 by J G, on Flickr
IMG_9205-Edit by J G, on Flickr
Whilst taking these and watching the incoming LHR traffic I thought how good it would be if one of them crossed the face of the sun, and lo and behold about 2 minutes later….alright not LHR traffic, actually a Ryanair 738 at 37,000 feet but all the same I thought well that is probably a once in a lifetime image….
IMG_9222-Edit1-2 by J G, on Flickr
….and then 5 minutes later….
Air France Embraer at 27,0000ft
IMG_9227-Edit by J G, on Flickr
There followed another two similar images but not as compositionally perfect.
I hope you like them.
Cheers,
Jeff
I thought I would share some images of the recent increase in solar activity.
The sunspots in these images are all bigger than the Earth and have been responsible for some recent solar flares, but thankfully not in our direction.
IMG_9218 by J G, on Flickr
IMG_9205-Edit by J G, on Flickr
Whilst taking these and watching the incoming LHR traffic I thought how good it would be if one of them crossed the face of the sun, and lo and behold about 2 minutes later….alright not LHR traffic, actually a Ryanair 738 at 37,000 feet but all the same I thought well that is probably a once in a lifetime image….
IMG_9222-Edit1-2 by J G, on Flickr
….and then 5 minutes later….
Air France Embraer at 27,0000ft
IMG_9227-Edit by J G, on Flickr
There followed another two similar images but not as compositionally perfect.
I hope you like them.
Cheers,
Jeff
I know you think you understood what I said, but I'm not sure you realise that what I said is not what I meant.
Re: Recent solar activity
Damn these are good. The Ryanair one is brilliant
"There's only one way of life, and that's your own"
Re: Recent solar activity
I really like these but I know nothing about solar activity so how is it that the spots have rotated by approx 90 degrees from the first images to the aircraft images?
Re: Recent solar activity
Thanks for the kind comments everyone.
To answer your comment Starbuck, the sun spots haven't rotated but I've rotated the images to their correct orientation, (based on the aircraft). The first two are as captured based on how my camera was mounted on my telescope. I was aware that my camera orientation was 90 degrees out but didn't want to rotate it as I had the focus dialled in and I would have had to re-focus it, and as the orginal idea was just to capture the sunspots I could rotate in post processing after, if I preferred it like that.
Therefore the aircraft were actually vertical straight out of camera.
To put it another way, the orientation of the sunspots in the corrected aircraft images is close to how they actually were on the suns disc.
Because in space there is no left, right, down or up, astro photos are often presented in whichever way the photographer likes most. In this instance it never occured to me to rotate the non aircraft image.
What did surprise me was how far the sunspots travelled in a couple of days, from the left of the sun to their more central position in this image set. The sun rotates once every 27 days....ish so I thought they would move slower, but as the sun is gas there are different rates of rotation across its surface, which I think has an effect.
Hope that helps explain a bit.
Cheers,
Jeff
To answer your comment Starbuck, the sun spots haven't rotated but I've rotated the images to their correct orientation, (based on the aircraft). The first two are as captured based on how my camera was mounted on my telescope. I was aware that my camera orientation was 90 degrees out but didn't want to rotate it as I had the focus dialled in and I would have had to re-focus it, and as the orginal idea was just to capture the sunspots I could rotate in post processing after, if I preferred it like that.
Therefore the aircraft were actually vertical straight out of camera.
To put it another way, the orientation of the sunspots in the corrected aircraft images is close to how they actually were on the suns disc.
Because in space there is no left, right, down or up, astro photos are often presented in whichever way the photographer likes most. In this instance it never occured to me to rotate the non aircraft image.
What did surprise me was how far the sunspots travelled in a couple of days, from the left of the sun to their more central position in this image set. The sun rotates once every 27 days....ish so I thought they would move slower, but as the sun is gas there are different rates of rotation across its surface, which I think has an effect.
Hope that helps explain a bit.
Cheers,
Jeff
I know you think you understood what I said, but I'm not sure you realise that what I said is not what I meant.
Re: Recent solar activity
Sorry Jeff, only just seen this, thanks for the explanation!
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Re: Recent solar activity
I do like this image, the aeroplane going across the face of the sun, really does show just how small we really are. When you consider that we are at a distance of approximately 92/93m miles from it and those sunspots, would most likely swallow the earth, without it touching the sides and yet our sun, when compared to others, is ranked to be at the lower end of the scale!
...and pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in Space cos there's bugger all down here on Earth!
Re: Recent solar activity
No problem Starbuck, glad it helped.
Cheers,
Jeff
I know you think you understood what I said, but I'm not sure you realise that what I said is not what I meant.
Re: Recent solar activity
Thanks Tony, I know what you mean, the scales of size and time in space are mind boggling and constantly amaze me.TonyC wrote: ↑Sat 07 May 2022, 3:55 pmI do like this image, the aeroplane going across the face of the sun, really does show just how small we really are. When you consider that we are at a distance of approximately 92/93m miles from it and those sunspots, would most likely swallow the earth, without it touching the sides and yet our sun, when compared to others, is ranked to be at the lower end of the scale!
Cheers,
Jeff
I know you think you understood what I said, but I'm not sure you realise that what I said is not what I meant.
Re: Recent solar activity
Each and every one is a stunner. Don’t know how you took them but they knocked me over.
Re: Recent solar activity
Thanks George and sorry for the late reply to you.
Its taken with my Sywatcher 200 Explorer Scope which had a special filter on the front (£20 for an A4 sheet), but DON'T try it without, you will melt your camera, (ask me how I know ).
Worse still you WILL blind yourself.
Its just normal photography after that, dialling in the exposure etc.
Thanks again,
Jeff
I know you think you understood what I said, but I'm not sure you realise that what I said is not what I meant.
Re: Recent solar activity
Superb photos. Wow. How do you take them?
Twitter: @samwise24 | Flickr: samwise24 | Shamelessly copying LN Strike Eagle's avatar ideas since 2016
Re: Recent solar activity
Thanks Sam, it s actually not technically difficult, it's more about having suitable equipment.
You can use any camera, but obviously the more zoomed in the better. My telescope is the equivalent of a 1000mm lens and with the crop sensor on my camera that becomes 1600mm.
Using the telescope the aperture is fixed so all I need to adjust is shutter speed and ISO, these were somewhere in the region of 1/2000 sec at ISO 100.
The most important thing is the filter, mine is made from this stuff:
https://www.harrisontelescopes.co.uk/ac ... -film.html
That is the price for one A4 sheet and you have to construct a holder yourself.
Hope that helps explain it.
I might try and post some more astro stuff later.
Cheers,
Jeff
I know you think you understood what I said, but I'm not sure you realise that what I said is not what I meant.
Re: Recent solar activity
Brilliant, very interesting
Twitter: @samwise24 | Flickr: samwise24 | Shamelessly copying LN Strike Eagle's avatar ideas since 2016