An enormous plasma plume bursting out of the Sun has been shown in a hauntingly beautiful shot by an astrophotographer.
According to the photographer, the blazing filament, also known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), reached a distance of more than 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from the solar surface.
Professional astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy, who lives in Arizona, took the picture on September 24. On September 25, he posted the breathtaking scene on Reddit on the r/space forum.
According to SpaceWeather.com, the CME was a component of a tiny solar storm that was oriented away from Earth and was classified as G-1 class, the lowest category on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geomagnetic Storm Scale.
According to McCarthy's Reddit post, the ethereal expulsion was "the biggest CME I've ever watched."
According to McCarthy, the plasma was first trapped in a large loop attached to the Sun's surface known as a prominence before it split off and flowed into space at a speed of around 100,000 mph (161,000 km/h).
According to McCarthy, the picture is a false-color time-lapse composite built from millions of photographs taken over a six-hour period.
Every second, between 30 and 80 unique photographs were taken and saved in a file that eventually reached a maximum size of almost 800 terabytes. The CME was then shown in exquisite detail by combining the photos.
Although the Sun's surface and CME seem orange in the shot, they are not really orange. The hydrogen-alpha, or H-alpha, light that emanates from the chromosphere (the lowest layer of the Sun's atmosphere) and CMEs is a form of light that occurs naturally.
A CME that the sun expelled
An approximately one million mile long coronal mass ejection is seen in a false-color composite picture. However, since each image's exposure period was so brief, the original pictures were nearly entirely white (Andrew McCarthy). While putting together the final picture, McCarthy digitally added the orange to emphasize the CME and offer contrast between different solar surface features.
The Sun still has a strange white halo that jumps out against the black background of space, but the remainder of the picture was not orange-filtered.
Since the Sun reached the solar maximum, a period of enhanced solar activity that lasts around seven years, CMEs have grown in frequency. People will have a lot more chances to take pictures like these as a result.
As we get closer to the solar maximum, McCarthy predicted that we will see more of them. Additionally, he warned, the plasma plumes are probably going to get "progressively bigger".
Without the right tools, people should not attempt to study the Sun, the photographer said.
McCarthy posted a warning on Reddit: "Do not aim a telescope towards the Sun." You'll damage your eyes or, worse still, your camera.
According to him, the telescope he used to take pictures of the CME was "specially adapted with numerous filters" so that he could watch it safely and get the pictures.
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