Coronal Loops-Digital Art Combination Captures Power of the Sun, Rendered by Andrew McCarthy

A composite image comprised of the Sun's surface, corona, and digitally-added coronal loops rendered by Andrew McCarthy. (Credit: Andrew McCarthy)

Our Sun is one of the most fascinating objects in the universe and photographing it with specialized equipment to capture its splendor and beauty has become increasingly more common around the world. This is most evident with the work obtained by renowned astrophotographer, Andrew McCarthy (@AJamesMcCarthy), who owns Cosmic Background Studios in Florence, Arizona.

On July 27, 2024, McCarthy posted an image of the Sun on X (formerly known as Twitter) taken with his specialized equipment designed to safely photograph our life-giving star, which revealed active coronal loops and plasma within the solar chromosphere that are some of the many intriguing features of the Sun. However, McCarthy is quick to mention in his post that this image isn’t entirely genuine, but a combination of several attributes.

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Betelgeuse. Before, During and After the Great Dimming

Image showing Betelgeuse (top left) and the dense nebulae of the Orion molecular cloud complex (Rogelio Bernal Andreo)
Orion and the molecular cloud covering the region. Betelgeuse is the red star in the upper left. (Credit : Rogelio Bernal Andreo)

When a prominent star in the night sky suddenly dims, it generates a lot of interest. That’s what happened with the red supergiant star Betelgeuse between November 2019 and May 2020. Betelgeuse will eventually explode as a supernova. Was the dimming a signal that the explosion was imminent?

No, and new research helps explain why.

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This Incredible Photo of the Sun is Made up of 150,000 Individual Photographs

A 300 megapixel photo of our Sun, taken by using a specially modified telescope, compiling over 150,000 individual images. Credit and copyright: Andrew McCarthy.

You’re looking at a 300-megapixel photo of our Sun. Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy used a specially modified telescope, taking over 150,000 individual photos and combing them into this magnificent image.

“It took about 10 hours to stack all the data, and another 3-4 hours to get it from a raw stack to the final image,” McCarthy said via email.

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The Sun

This image from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) image shows large magnetically active regions and a pair of curving erupting prominences on June 28, 2000 during the current solar cycle 23 maximum. Prominences are huge clouds of relatively cool dense plasma suspended in the Sun's hot, thin corona. Magnetically active regions cause the principal total solar irradiance variations during each solar cycle. The hottest areas appear almost white, while the darker red areas indicate cooler temperatures. Credit: NASA & European Space Agency (ESA)
The Sun. Credit: NASA & European Space Agency (ESA)

The Sun is the center of the Solar System and the source of all life and energy here on Earth. It accounts for more than 99.86% of the mass of the Solar System and it’s gravity dominates all the planets and objects that orbit it. Since the beginning of history, human beings have understood the Sun’s importance to our world, it’s seasons, the diurnal cycle, and the life-cycle of plants.

Because of this, the Sun has been at the center of many ancient culture’s mythologies and systems of worship. From the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas to the ancient Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Druids, the Sun was a central deity because it was seen as the bringer of all light and life. In time, our understanding of the Sun has changed and become increasingly empirical. But that has done nothing to diminish it’s significance.

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Chromosphere

Plasma on the surface of the Sun. Image credit: Hinode

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The Sun may look like just a mass of incandescent gas (plasma, really), but it’s actually broken up into layers. The chromosphere is relatively thin region of the Sun that’s just above the photosphere.

The photosphere is the region of the Sun that we see. It measures an average temperature of almost 5,800 kelvin and produces the visible radiation. This is the point where photons generated inside the Sun can finally leap out into space. The chromosphere measures just 2,000 km, and it’s just outside the photosphere.

Even though it’s very thin, the chromosphere changes dramatically in density, from the top down to the photosphere, the density of the chromosphere increases by a factor of 5 million. The upper boundary of the chromosphere is the called the solar transition region, above which is known as the corona.

One surprising mystery is that the chromosphere is actually hotter than the photosphere. While the photosphere hovers around 5,800 kelvin, the temperature of the chromosphere varies between 4,500 K and 20,000 K. Even though it’s more distant from the center of the Sun, the chromosphere is hotter than the photosphere. Astronomers think turbulence in the Sun’s atmosphere might somehow cause this extra heating.

The chromosphere is difficult to see without special equipment because the light from the much brighter photosphere washes it out. It has a reddish color, but you can only really see it during a total solar eclipse.

One of the recognizable features of the chromosphere are spicules. These are fingers of gas that kind of look like grass growing on the surface of the Sun. These can rise up in the chromosphere and then disappear again within 10 minutes.

We’ve written several episodes about the Sun for Universe Today. Here’s an article about the Sun’s atmosphere, and here’s an article about how solar astronomers are getting better at predicting the solar wind.

If you’d like more info on the Sun, check out NASA’s Solar System Exploration Guide on the Sun, and here’s a link to the SOHO mission homepage, which has the latest images from the Sun.

We’ve also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast just about the Sun. Listen here, Episode 30: The Sun, Spots and All.