Hottest shot of Sun... from a garden
THIS shot of the Sun is one of the clearest taken from Earth – but no photographers were harmed in the making of it.
Amateur super-snapper Andrew McCarthy took the eye-popping close-up from the safety of his back garden using an ultra-sharp telescope.
He set himself his “most unique challenge” yet by capturing tens of thousands of images and layering them.
The resulting image shows the dancing flames and flares of the Sun’s plasma 93 million miles away.
Andrew explained the 230-megapixel composite image blends 100,000 shots – taken at a rate of 100 per second.
He has spent the past three years photographing the Sun and the Moon while holding down a job at a software firm.
But he said of his latest shot: “I was very pleased with the final result. I wasn’t sure if the image would turn out so well.
“Stitching together a large photo of the sun comes with unique challenges that I’ve never dealt with before.
“But I will definitely be producing more of these.”He revealed he kitted himself out with a solar telescope with 4000mm of focal length – 10 times stronger than his last one.
Andrew added: “I used a technique called ‘lucky imaging’, so the best frames from a particular session are stacked together to help reduce the effects of the atmosphere.
“These photos were captured just before noon, when the Sun was high in the sky but while the atmosphere was still relatively calm.
“By capturing close-up details of the surface with this rig, timed when the atmosphere was very still, I was able to produce sharp details on its surface.
“These objects around the edge of the Sun are known as a prominence – a mass of plasma suspended in the solar atmosphere by the sun’s powerful magnetic field.
“These happen quite frequently, and last a long time.”
●To see more of Andrew’s amazing photos, visit his Instagram page @cosmic_background