Astrophotographer captures the beauty of solar activity in stunning sun photo

Miguel Claro is a professional photographer, author and science communicator based in Lisbon, Portugal, who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory Photo Ambassador and member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical “Skyscapes” that connect both Earth and the night sky. 

This time lapse of the entire visible disk of the sun was captured on Sept. 2, 2024.

There are many interesting features seen happening at the same time during this 3-hour time lapse. We can see minor solar prominences (large tendrils of plasma) and coronal loops erupting from the western (left) limb of the sun in addition to large filaments and small spicules dancing like hair in the wind. These are composed of delicate lines of plasma floating away from the sun, propelled by the sun’s strong magnetic fields.

A fast and large eruption on the western limb can be seen, which I later confirmed using the CACTUS system to be a coronal mass ejection (CME) being unleashed. A powerful M1.8-class solar flare from the sunspot region AR3813 preceded the CME, and an even stronger M2.9 flare followed in quick succession from sunspot AR3807.

Finally, a wonderful large prominence growing like an umbrella thorn acacia tree can be seen ‘sprouting’ from the northern (topmost) edge of the sun as if its ‘roots’ are being fed by the wild ‘savanna’ of the solar chromosphere.

I believe that this is probably one of the most detailed solar time lapses ever made by an independent astrophotographer. It reveals the beauty of solar activity with an unprecedented level of detail and depth as the result of a brand-new technique and workflow I have developed.

It is important to mention that these are real images captured by me with special solar equipment without any AI generation or intervention at any part of the process, not even for noise reduction. I have more behind-the-scenes information at my Instagram.

The movie above was produced with music licensed from Envato titled “Commercial Space Rock” by AudioEarth, but I’ve also included the low frequency sounds of the sun in the first seconds of the video. This sonification of solar data was produced by A. Kosovichev from the Stanford Experimental Physics Lab with Data from ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). The sound was sped up by a factor of 42,000 in order to bring it into the audible range of human hearing. You can hear the isolated sound here.

The sun’s natural vibrations provide scientists with a concrete representation of its dynamic movements, but due to the lack of air in space, it’s impossible to hear or record the sounds of the sun as we perceive sound on Earth. For a more immersive audio/visual experience, the sound of a volcanic eruption was added quietly in the background, synchronized with the times at which solar eruptions and large prominences appear.

The time lapse sequence was captured from the Dark Sky Alqueva reserve in Portugal with a Player One Saturn-M SQR camera and a Lunt telescope LS100, generating around 3TB of data. The final result is a 5K high resolution solar movie composted 249 images over the course of about 3 hours, between UT11h28 and UT14h20 on Sept. 2, 2024.

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