Where Passion Meets Exploration

The images you will be viewing were made using Coronado PST hydrogen-alpha solar telescope. This is a 40mm (1.6”) telescope that views only the red spectral line associated with hydrogen dropping from the third to second lowest energy level. As a result, all light is blocked except the tiny fraction of red that is from hydrogen-alpha (in this case more than 99.97% of the light is blocked) - this makes it safe to view the Sun. Since most color cameras have RGGB (red, green, green, blue) filters on their sensors, I would be wasting 3 out of 4 of the pixels; I therefore take B&W images so that I can use all pixels. To capture each image, I use a photographic technique called focus stacking where I take many images (500 in this case) and use those to create one really good quality image. Since focus, sky clarity, humidity, etc. change over very short periods of time (just look through a telescope for a few minutes to prove this to yourself), this process helps corrects for those imperfections. The focus stacking program searches each image for ‘in-focus’ areas and places those areas in the final image – creating a final image that is as sharp and clear as possible. On this scope you also have to 'tune' a special filter (called an etalon) to get the right frequency of red to show each feature at its best and, as a result, separate imaging is required to capture features such as sunspots, plages, filaments, prominences and flares. I must then combine these into a composite image using Photoshop. I finish by adding color and a ‘blue dot’ to represent the size of the Earth and then save as a smaller file to share.

Important Words: Image showing these features follow:

Plage (Pl) - bright active region

Sunspot (ss)– cooler regions on the Sun caused by magnetic field interactions

De-Tuned Sunspot (dt)– The H-a telescope can be de-tuned to simulate a ‘white light’ solar telescope and show sunspots with umbral and penumbral features

Umbra – dark, inner region of a sunspot

Penumbra – outer, lighter region of a sunspot

Prominence (P) - plasma/hot gas arcs that follow magnetic field lines

Filament (F) - dark arcs - these are prominences seen from above and so appear cooler

Flare – a brief, high-energy eruption on the Sun associated with sunspots

Spicules (S) – jets of gas/plasma ejected from the Sun seen on the limb of the Sun

Barlow lens – lens used to increase the magnification of an image – mine is 2x