The sun is one of the space objects that we always encounter every day, but to observe it clearly requires a way that is not easy. Fortunately, thanks to the help of technology, a photographer managed to capture the most detailed photos of the sun and the results are truly stunning.
Andrew McCarthy, an astrophotographer from Arizona, United States, recently shared this photo of the sun on Instagram and Reddit. He exhibited several photos, from zoomed out to close up photos showing patterns on the sun's surface.
In a post on Reddit, McCarthy said this photo was taken using a special telescope that had been fitted with a filter. He warned not to look at the sun directly from a telescope because it could harm the eyes.
McCarthy said he used a solar telescope with a narrow bandpass. This modification allows it to take photos of the sun with a higher contrast.
With this modification, McCarthy can point his telescope directly at the Sun and take photos without worrying about the camera burning out, as quoted from BGR, Wednesday (12/8/2021).
To produce this photo, McCarthy took more than 300,000 photos of the sun, but he then selected the best 150,000 photos. These hundreds of thousands of photos are then combined to eliminate the distortion effect in the atmosphere.
The final image has a resolution of 300 MP. The photos that McCarthy exhibits are amazing, and show the details of the sun's surface very sharply. Without the need to look at the close-up photo, details such as sunspots and flares can be seen clearly.
For lovers of astronomical photos, McCarthy's shots are certainly very pleasing to the eye. Previously, he had also shared photos of the partial solar eclipse that occurred late last month on his Instagram account.
In addition to McCarthy's photo, there were actually several other super-detailed photos of the sun that had been exhibited, but they were taken using much more sophisticated telescopes. Like the clearest photo of sunspots taken by the US National Science Foundation's Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope.