We photograph the sun

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    This amazing image of the sun has already circled the entire Internet. Wired reporters managed to find out from the author the photos of the artist and astrophotographer Alan Friedman, how he took this picture.

    Friedman removes the sky from his backyard in downtown Buffalo, NY. Thus, typical candidates for celestial imagery such as galaxies, nebulae, and distant star clusters are inaccessible due to city light. But the Sun is a completely distinguishable and accessible object in a clear cloudless sky.

    On October 20, Friedman connected an alpha-hydrogen filter to his telescope, which selects a tiny piece of the visible spectrum. Hydrogen, the main component of the Sun, has a strong emission in this dark red light, allowing you to display the outer layers and flares, extending from the solar disk sharply and in detail.

    Friedman said that several years ago this type of filter was available only for large scientific telescopes. And as before, it’s not cheap - the filter cost the author $ 5,000 in pictures. Friedman calls his telescope “Little Big Man” because, having a small size, he has great abilities. The telescope lens has a diameter of 3.5 inches (approximately 9 cm).

    Instead of just taking individual shots, Friedman took 90 seconds of video and selected only clear frames. Each exposition recorded about 900 frames, but after selection the photographer left only 200 of the best.

    In two separately filmed 90-second videos, Friedman zoomed in on the edge of the solar disk to remove trickles of gas curving along the loops of the Sun’s magnetic field, as well as spots and detailed bursts of the Sun’s atmosphere.
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    Then he inverted the image, making all the dark spots light and vice versa. Usually, photographs that take the sun do not, Friedman says, but it gives a more authentic sense of the sun.

    Friedman's camera shoots in black and white, so he added some colors to the photograph. Although in general he tries to keep his astrophotographs reliable for science, here he allowed some liberties with the choice of color.

    “This image is special for the upcoming Halloween,” he said. "The sun cannot be any color other than orange."
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    via Wired

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