SpaceForEverybody.com

Here I’ll be posting my daily High Resolution images of the Sun so bookmark, share, and subscribe to my YouTube Page to keep up with the journey!

I’ll be swapping out the images daily as I capture them, when weather and my schedule allow!

Use the Navigator to move around in the image and select from the different layers…

Yesterday’s images of the Sun and a brief explanation of this entire process… I’ve now assembled the equipment to photograph and reveal three visible layers of our Star.

**WARNING**

NEVER POINT A TELESCOPE, BINOCULAR, or LENS AT THE SUN. BLINDNESS, FIRE, and DAMAGE WILL OCCUR WITHOUT PROPER FILTERS.

Now that Ive warned you, let’s get some perspective. Your home (typical household) uses around 2000 watts a day and for comparison, the Sun emits 384.6 septillion watts a second. So, Yeah. Massive. Amounts. Of. Energy.

Magnificently, this simple display of spectrum and light illustrates ALL- YOU OR I UNDERSTAND AND KNOW- about the visible world. Without the Sun, we would not exist here on this planet.

Why do I do all this? I simply want to show how amazing all light is. It’s structure, it’s movement, and it’s effects fascinate me. I take Sagan’s words to heart- If we understand just how amazing and precious life is, maybe we will deal with it (life, ie: each other, Planet Earth, all life) more kindly (paraphrasing of course).

So, the image. The green image- This is referred to the Solar Continuum because of the filter used to achieve visibility into the 540nm of the spectrum (green)- you see the lowest visible layer of the Sun- the photosphere, taken with the center telescope. This is where the Sun’s gasses transition from transparent to an opaque visible layer. Underneath here, photons bounce around for a hundred thousand years or so. Once they escape, they can be collected as a broadband image -although the filter blocks 95% or all wavelengths, the solar continuum filter reduces that further to a band of just 540nm-in the green spectrum-hence the color.

The purple image is the lowest layer of the chromosphere and is captured from the telescope on the left. The chromosphere sits directly on top of the photosphere. In the purple image you see the structures begin to rise from the surface of the Sun, revealing the movement of plasma as it escapes the core. This structure is visible in the Calcium K line (393nm), and the reason for the purple hue.

Finally the orange image is from the upper layer of the Sun and reveals the chaotic nature of plasma and gas as it escapes the core. Also in this image, the Coronal structure is revealed at the edge. The image is captured by a hydrogen telescope (on the right) at a wavelength of 656nm.

These layers represent the journey of a photon out of our Star, captured daily by my equipment in Chattanooga, TN.

And at the end of that photons journey out of our Star, it drives all life…

OR…

it finds its way to your eye, where it is destroyed and processed by the complex components of your eyeball, and then interpreted by your brain.

Fascinating.

Apologies if I wasn’t clear in my explanation, or am inaccurate. And thanks to all the teachers and writers of science education who helped me piece it all together.

Also, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk

Solar Continuum

Calcium-K

Hydrogen Alpha

Hydrogen Inverted