SOLAR SYSTEM

SOLAR SYSTEM

SIZE / DISTANCE

The solar system's closest object is the Moon averages 238,855 miles away - about 30 Earth diameters. It's 2,159 miles wide.

The Sun averages 93,000,000 miles away. It's 864,600 miles wide - 109 times wider than Earth, which is 7,918 miles wide.

EQUIPMENT USED

The equipment used and the exposure times vary substantially from object to object, and are very different than when imaging nebula.

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THE SUN

In junior high school, my science project about sunspots, using a small 3" refractor telescope I received as a Christmas gift. My project, titled "Do Sunspots Affect the Weather?", earned an award from the National Weather Service—a moment that sparked my lifelong fascination with the Sun.

Forty years later, with much more advanced equipment, I captured this mosaic image of the Sun, made from 28 individual frames. My solar-dedicated telescope setup utilizes an electronically adjustable Hydrogen Alpha filter, allowing me to alternate between seeing details of solar prominences (flares) or the chromosphere (the Sun’s surface). The two are later combined into a single image.

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IMAGING THE SUN

This mosaic was created from 28 separate images that together formed the final Sun image shown above. In total, I captured 56,000 frames, taken in sets of 2,000. Only the sharpest 1% of those frames were selected for use.

Each selected set was stacked using Autostakkert, sharpened with ImPPG, and then carefully merged into a single final image in Photoshop, where color was added to bring the Sun’s dynamic features to life.

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SOLAR ECLIPSE

APRIL 8, 2014

For my fourth total eclipse, and my third attempt to photograph it, I traveled to Torreon, Mexico, a small town on the centerline of the shadow's path.

The corona (the outer run rays) was created from 42 separate images - 7 images stacked from 6 different exposure times. From 1.800th of a second to 1 second. Bailey's Beads, the sun peaking through valleys on the moon, were two separate images - one at the beginning of totality and one at then end.

An earlier version of the image, a less detailed, hastily processed version, was featured on the cover of Astronomy Magazine.