6 ms·

140 Megapixel Picture of the Sun

182 points by skilled 4y ago

tiffanyh 4y ago
Is this a “raw” photo or has a bunch of computional photography / AI been applied?
- skilled 4y ago
  Here is what the author said: > This image is a fusion from the minds of two astrophotographers, Myself and u/thevastreaches . The combined data from over 90,000 individual images captured with a modified telescope last Friday was jointly processed to reveal the layers of intricate details within the solar chromosphere. A geometrically altered image of the 2017 eclipse as an artistic element in this composition to display an otherwise invisible structure. Great care was taken to align the two atmospheric layers in a scientifically plausible way using NASA's SOHO data as a reference. > If you're curious how I take these sorts of images, I have a write-up on my website. Check it out here: https://cosmicbackground.io/blogs/learn-about-how-these-are-captured/capturing-our-star https://cosmicbackground.io/blogs/learn-about-how-these-are-...
- antisthenes 4y ago
  There's no such thing as a "raw" photo. Even your eyes process certain wavelengths and omit a lot of the spectrum that something like the Sun emits.
  - SomeHacker44 4y ago
    Photographers think of "RAW" as the unmodified original data from the image sensor. It is raw in the sense that no further processing has been applied yet to make a human viewable image (or whatever you want to do with it). It would need to be demosaic'd, adjusted for lens distortion, have dynamic range and gamma adjustments, and other things to make a nice image for humans to view.
    - danieleggert 4y ago
      The “raw” data in so-called “raw” image formats in not unprocessed data from the image sensor. The camera will already have done processing on the data, it’s just not fully processed. If it was indeed raw data off the sensor, you’d see all kinds of “bad” things such as dead pixels. And camera vendors (obviously?) don’t want you to see that.
      - CharlesW 4y ago
        > The “raw” data in so-called “raw” image formats in not unprocessed data from the image sensor. RAW images are completely un-demosaiced and otherwise unprocessed sensor data, dead or stuck pixels and all. It's the job of the RAW converter (whether performed in-camera or post-capture) to hide those in the conversion to a standard color space. Manufacturers are now blurring the meaning of RAW to be closer to what you imagine. For example, Apple's ProRAW images are demosaiced and heavily processed.
    - antisthenes 4y ago
      > Photographers think of "RAW" as the unmodified original data from the image sensor. It is raw in the sense that no further processing has been applied yet to make a human viewable image (or whatever you want to do with it). It would need to be demosaic'd, adjusted for lens distortion, have dynamic range and gamma adjustments, and other things to make a nice image for humans to view. Yes, but even besides that, image sensors only capture a part of the spectrum. Is a combination image from 3 different spectrums (let's say UV/X-Ray/Visible) raw or no? Is it less or more raw than individual images? That's what my comment was about.
  - hjkl0 4y ago
    It’s pretty clear what is meant by “raw photo” here. This is not a raw photo, and probably not really what we’d call a “photo” at all, more like a visualization.
    - yokoprime 4y ago
      Captured radiant energy was involved in the process, so I think it can be considered a photo. But it’s not raw data straight out of the camera. That being said, a composite timelapse of the night sky isn’t a raw photograph either. I don’t think you find a lot of “raw photos“ in Astro photography
- bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
  Computational: > This image is a fusion from the minds of two astrophotographers, Myself and u/thevastreaches. The combined data from over 90,000 individual images captured with a modified telescope last Friday was jointly processed to reveal the layers of intricate details within the solar chromosphere. A geometrically altered image of the 2017 eclipse as an artistic element in this composition to display an otherwise invisible structure. Great care was taken to align the two atmospheric layers in a scientifically plausible way using NASA's SOHO data as a reference. The final image is the most detailed and dynamic full image of our star either of us have ever created. A blend of science and art, this image is a one-of-a kind astrophoto, as the ever-changing sun will never quite look like this again.
- dmead 4y ago
  The photographer here is one of the biggest users of topaz denoise/sharpening. It's an ai model that is really great at cleaning up back yard astrophotography. It's considered cheating.
  - macinjosh 4y ago
    Or the guy is just having fun enjoying his hobby.
    - florbo 4y ago
      The photographer is very upfront about the process, too.
  - rvnx 4y ago
    At some point the photo cameras or mobile phones are going to automatically include such denoising features (since it's an artefact of the photo capture, not a visible element) and then people would still call it "#nofilter"
    - hutzlibu 4y ago
      Erm, that point has come since quite a while. Recent controversy over fake sony moonshots: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35107601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35107601
      - rvnx 4y ago
        True, this was a fascinating one :)
      - unwind 4y ago
        *Samsung, though. Not Sony.
  - yokoprime 4y ago
    Why is it considered cheating? What is it cheating against?
JKCalhoun 4y ago
I wonder why we can't model the sun. It would seem to be simpler than say modeling the weather on Earth.
- thfuran 4y ago
  Why would it be simple?
  - macintux 4y ago
    No butterflies.
- brilee 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamics Sure we do. It is different and no simpler than modeling weather. Weather at least has the advantage of a 3D system decomposing into a 2D sphere X 1D height dimension via a thin shell approximation, but also has the complexity of humidity. The Sun is intrinsically a 3D system, but has electromagnetic complications.
  - dtgriscom 4y ago
    > the complexity of humidity Without the nonlinearity of water vapor<=>liquid<=>ice, Earth weather predictions would be pretty darn easy. IANA astrophysicist, but I'm guessing the same would be true about the Sun without magnetic fields.
- elteto 4y ago
  What does “model” even mean here?
  - tintedfireglass 4y ago
    make the sun into a set of mathematical equations, like the way gargantuan was modeled in interstellar https://github.com/sirxemic/Interstellar https://github.com/sirxemic/Interstellar or the way schrodinger wave equations model an atom. [libretexts schrodinger equation] https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/University_of_California_Davis/UCD_Chem_107B%3A_Physical_Chemistry_for_Life_Scientists/Chapters/4%3A_Quantum_Theory/4.10%3A_The_Schr%C3%B6dinger_Wave_Equation_for_the_Hydrogen_Atom https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/University_of_California...
kid64 4y ago
Wait so did he make the full-resolution, uncropped image available?
- skilled 4y ago
  I'm not sure if this is full-resolution, but the uncropped image was posted on his Twitter account: https://twitter.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1638648459002806272 https://twitter.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/163864845900280627...
- AkshatJ27 4y ago
  Uncropped: https://nitter.net/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1638648459002806272 https://nitter.net/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1638648459002806272 The full resolution image is being sold on author's website here: https://cosmicbackground.io/products/fusion-of-helios https://cosmicbackground.io/products/fusion-of-helios The print ready 139 megapixel version costs 50$
gonzo41 4y ago
Great image. and, SpaceX should totally offer cremations where you can get shot into the sun.
- kwonkicker 4y ago
  Food your repeat that please?!
cwillu 4y ago
“A geometrically altered image of the 2017 eclipse as an artistic element in this composition to display an otherwise invisible structure. Great care was taken to align the two atmospheric layers in a scientifically plausible way using NASA's SOHO data as a reference. The final image is the most detailed and dynamic full image of our star either of us have ever created. A blend of science and art, this image is a one-of-a kind astrophoto, as the ever-changing sun will never quite look like this again.”
davidw 4y ago
Make sure you view it with appropriate shielding for your eyes!
mncharity 4y ago
True color images of the Sun are rare, so just for context, the Sun looks roughly like [1] (the original upload of the Wikipedia "Sun"'s current header image, before it was degraded[2] by its author and others). Does anyone have a favorite true color image of the Sun? Real or synthetic? I wish I knew of even one created with good research-paper-level care. Searching now, I sank in the usual swamp of artistic bogosity. Perhaps one could take a common visible-band image for grayscale detail, and colorize it with computed limb darkening tint? (Computed tinting like this[3], but there are python astro libraries now.) [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/8/83/20211116143723%21The_Sun_in_white_light.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/8/83/... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Sun_in_white_light.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Sun_in_white_light.jp... used on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun [3] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/16622/need-help-simulating-solar-limb-darkening/16639#16639 https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/16622/need-help-si...
- kelsolaar 4y ago
  “True Colour” does not really mean much here because colour is a characteristic of visual perception, i.e., it a human observer construct. With that in mind, and disregarding the fact that it is impossible to directly observe, the colour of the Sun would be white because it is the dominant irradiance source around us and an observer would be logically be chromatically adapted to it. It is the reason why the standard illuminant in colour science is D65, i.e. a average spectrum of the sun going through our atmosphere.
  - aaron695 4y ago
    [dead]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mncharity 4y ago
    > does not really mean much here [...] impossible to directly observe As misconceptions are common around the Sun, sunlight, and colour, it can be helpful to crosscheck concepts by swapping the Sun for a more familiar object: a light bulb, display, wall, shirt, or elephant. Imagine an article about a newly energy-efficient light bulb, which included only false-color thermal and near IR images - "Look, less waste heat and wasted light!". Would it seem odd to suggest adding a true-color visible-light photo? What if the authors color graded such a photo to hide a less marketable, say greenish cast? Years ago, NASA did a traveling museum exhibit on the Sun with lots of colorful images, but not a single white Sun. Now imagine a traveling exhibit on elephants. With colorful thermal IR images of ears as radiators, and false-color images of skin parasite distribution (thus mud baths) and so on. But not a single grey elephant. How odd would that be? Presented with "A 5-year old asks: The Sun is a big hot ball... what color is the ball?", it's not uncommon for first-tier-U physical-sciences graduate students to answer with variations on "it doesn't have a color; it's lots of different colors; it's rainbow color", reflecting misconceptions around color perception. Which then might be probed with "A 5-year old asks: what color is that shirt?". "Why does the Sun shine? Fusion!" becomes "Why does the LED light bulb shine? Electricity!", highlighting the incompleteness. Another crosscheck is seeing how the non-uniform appearance of the Sun (limb darkening) is handled. With the edge/limb appearing darker and redder because of longer sight lines through cooler higher layers.
DoItToMe81 4y ago
140 megapixel computer interpretation of the sun. Much lamer.
cubefox 4y ago
I don't quite understand why it is apparently so hard to make a decent photo of the sun. Obviously you would need quite a strong filter to get it dark enough (otherwise the photo will be overexposed), and you need to zoom in since the sun appears not very large from Earth. But other than that?
dave333 4y ago
The bright streak above and to the left of the center of the image looks like a phoenix or maybe a dragon!
b3nji 4y ago
Would it be fair to say this is an impressive computer rendering of the sun? Are there any real, untouched, photos of the sun available? Is it true the sun is actually white?
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
You can almost see, were the center of gravity of the solar system steers the pot..

182 points by skilled 4y ago

tiffanyh 4y ago

Is this a “raw” photo or has a bunch of computional photography / AI been applied?

skilled 4y ago
Here is what the author said: > This image is a fusion from the minds of two astrophotographers, Myself and u/thevastreaches . The combined data from over 90,000 individual images captured with a modified telescope last Friday was jointly processed to reveal the layers of intricate details within the solar chromosphere. A geometrically altered image of the 2017 eclipse as an artistic element in this composition to display an otherwise invisible structure. Great care was taken to align the two atmospheric layers in a scientifically plausible way using NASA's SOHO data as a reference. > If you're curious how I take these sorts of images, I have a write-up on my website. Check it out here: https://cosmicbackground.io/blogs/learn-about-how-these-are-captured/capturing-our-star https://cosmicbackground.io/blogs/learn-about-how-these-are-...
antisthenes 4y ago
There's no such thing as a "raw" photo. Even your eyes process certain wavelengths and omit a lot of the spectrum that something like the Sun emits.
- SomeHacker44 4y ago
  Photographers think of "RAW" as the unmodified original data from the image sensor. It is raw in the sense that no further processing has been applied yet to make a human viewable image (or whatever you want to do with it). It would need to be demosaic'd, adjusted for lens distortion, have dynamic range and gamma adjustments, and other things to make a nice image for humans to view.
  - danieleggert 4y ago
    The “raw” data in so-called “raw” image formats in not unprocessed data from the image sensor. The camera will already have done processing on the data, it’s just not fully processed. If it was indeed raw data off the sensor, you’d see all kinds of “bad” things such as dead pixels. And camera vendors (obviously?) don’t want you to see that.
    - CharlesW 4y ago
      > The “raw” data in so-called “raw” image formats in not unprocessed data from the image sensor. RAW images are completely un-demosaiced and otherwise unprocessed sensor data, dead or stuck pixels and all. It's the job of the RAW converter (whether performed in-camera or post-capture) to hide those in the conversion to a standard color space. Manufacturers are now blurring the meaning of RAW to be closer to what you imagine. For example, Apple's ProRAW images are demosaiced and heavily processed.
  - antisthenes 4y ago
    > Photographers think of "RAW" as the unmodified original data from the image sensor. It is raw in the sense that no further processing has been applied yet to make a human viewable image (or whatever you want to do with it). It would need to be demosaic'd, adjusted for lens distortion, have dynamic range and gamma adjustments, and other things to make a nice image for humans to view. Yes, but even besides that, image sensors only capture a part of the spectrum. Is a combination image from 3 different spectrums (let's say UV/X-Ray/Visible) raw or no? Is it less or more raw than individual images? That's what my comment was about.
- hjkl0 4y ago
  It’s pretty clear what is meant by “raw photo” here. This is not a raw photo, and probably not really what we’d call a “photo” at all, more like a visualization.
  - yokoprime 4y ago
    Captured radiant energy was involved in the process, so I think it can be considered a photo. But it’s not raw data straight out of the camera. That being said, a composite timelapse of the night sky isn’t a raw photograph either. I don’t think you find a lot of “raw photos“ in Astro photography
bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
Computational: > This image is a fusion from the minds of two astrophotographers, Myself and u/thevastreaches. The combined data from over 90,000 individual images captured with a modified telescope last Friday was jointly processed to reveal the layers of intricate details within the solar chromosphere. A geometrically altered image of the 2017 eclipse as an artistic element in this composition to display an otherwise invisible structure. Great care was taken to align the two atmospheric layers in a scientifically plausible way using NASA's SOHO data as a reference. The final image is the most detailed and dynamic full image of our star either of us have ever created. A blend of science and art, this image is a one-of-a kind astrophoto, as the ever-changing sun will never quite look like this again.
dmead 4y ago
The photographer here is one of the biggest users of topaz denoise/sharpening. It's an ai model that is really great at cleaning up back yard astrophotography. It's considered cheating.
- macinjosh 4y ago
  Or the guy is just having fun enjoying his hobby.
  - florbo 4y ago
    The photographer is very upfront about the process, too.
- rvnx 4y ago
  At some point the photo cameras or mobile phones are going to automatically include such denoising features (since it's an artefact of the photo capture, not a visible element) and then people would still call it "#nofilter"
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    Erm, that point has come since quite a while. Recent controversy over fake sony moonshots: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35107601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35107601
    - rvnx 4y ago
      True, this was a fascinating one :)
    - unwind 4y ago
      *Samsung, though. Not Sony.
- yokoprime 4y ago
  Why is it considered cheating? What is it cheating against?

JKCalhoun 4y ago

I wonder why we can't model the sun. It would seem to be simpler than say modeling the weather on Earth.

thfuran 4y ago
Why would it be simple?
- macintux 4y ago
  No butterflies.
brilee 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamics Sure we do. It is different and no simpler than modeling weather. Weather at least has the advantage of a 3D system decomposing into a 2D sphere X 1D height dimension via a thin shell approximation, but also has the complexity of humidity. The Sun is intrinsically a 3D system, but has electromagnetic complications.
- dtgriscom 4y ago
  > the complexity of humidity Without the nonlinearity of water vapor<=>liquid<=>ice, Earth weather predictions would be pretty darn easy. IANA astrophysicist, but I'm guessing the same would be true about the Sun without magnetic fields.
elteto 4y ago
What does “model” even mean here?
- tintedfireglass 4y ago
  make the sun into a set of mathematical equations, like the way gargantuan was modeled in interstellar https://github.com/sirxemic/Interstellar https://github.com/sirxemic/Interstellar or the way schrodinger wave equations model an atom. [libretexts schrodinger equation] https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/University_of_California_Davis/UCD_Chem_107B%3A_Physical_Chemistry_for_Life_Scientists/Chapters/4%3A_Quantum_Theory/4.10%3A_The_Schr%C3%B6dinger_Wave_Equation_for_the_Hydrogen_Atom https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/University_of_California...

kid64 4y ago

Wait so did he make the full-resolution, uncropped image available?

skilled 4y ago
I'm not sure if this is full-resolution, but the uncropped image was posted on his Twitter account: https://twitter.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1638648459002806272 https://twitter.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/163864845900280627...
AkshatJ27 4y ago
Uncropped: https://nitter.net/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1638648459002806272 https://nitter.net/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1638648459002806272 The full resolution image is being sold on author's website here: https://cosmicbackground.io/products/fusion-of-helios https://cosmicbackground.io/products/fusion-of-helios The print ready 139 megapixel version costs 50$

gonzo41 4y ago

Great image. and, SpaceX should totally offer cremations where you can get shot into the sun.

kwonkicker 4y ago
Food your repeat that please?!

cwillu 4y ago

“A geometrically altered image of the 2017 eclipse as an artistic element in this composition to display an otherwise invisible structure. Great care was taken to align the two atmospheric layers in a scientifically plausible way using NASA's SOHO data as a reference. The final image is the most detailed and dynamic full image of our star either of us have ever created. A blend of science and art, this image is a one-of-a kind astrophoto, as the ever-changing sun will never quite look like this again.”

davidw 4y ago

Make sure you view it with appropriate shielding for your eyes!

mncharity 4y ago

True color images of the Sun are rare, so just for context, the Sun looks roughly like [1] (the original upload of the Wikipedia "Sun"'s current header image, before it was degraded[2] by its author and others). Does anyone have a favorite true color image of the Sun? Real or synthetic? I wish I knew of even one created with good research-paper-level care. Searching now, I sank in the usual swamp of artistic bogosity. Perhaps one could take a common visible-band image for grayscale detail, and colorize it with computed limb darkening tint? (Computed tinting like this[3], but there are python astro libraries now.) [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/8/83/20211116143723%21The_Sun_in_white_light.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/8/83/... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Sun_in_white_light.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Sun_in_white_light.jp... used on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun [3] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/16622/need-help-simulating-solar-limb-darkening/16639#16639 https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/16622/need-help-si...

kelsolaar 4y ago
“True Colour” does not really mean much here because colour is a characteristic of visual perception, i.e., it a human observer construct. With that in mind, and disregarding the fact that it is impossible to directly observe, the colour of the Sun would be white because it is the dominant irradiance source around us and an observer would be logically be chromatically adapted to it. It is the reason why the standard illuminant in colour science is D65, i.e. a average spectrum of the sun going through our atmosphere.
- aaron695 4y ago
  [dead]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mncharity 4y ago
  > does not really mean much here [...] impossible to directly observe As misconceptions are common around the Sun, sunlight, and colour, it can be helpful to crosscheck concepts by swapping the Sun for a more familiar object: a light bulb, display, wall, shirt, or elephant. Imagine an article about a newly energy-efficient light bulb, which included only false-color thermal and near IR images - "Look, less waste heat and wasted light!". Would it seem odd to suggest adding a true-color visible-light photo? What if the authors color graded such a photo to hide a less marketable, say greenish cast? Years ago, NASA did a traveling museum exhibit on the Sun with lots of colorful images, but not a single white Sun. Now imagine a traveling exhibit on elephants. With colorful thermal IR images of ears as radiators, and false-color images of skin parasite distribution (thus mud baths) and so on. But not a single grey elephant. How odd would that be? Presented with "A 5-year old asks: The Sun is a big hot ball... what color is the ball?", it's not uncommon for first-tier-U physical-sciences graduate students to answer with variations on "it doesn't have a color; it's lots of different colors; it's rainbow color", reflecting misconceptions around color perception. Which then might be probed with "A 5-year old asks: what color is that shirt?". "Why does the Sun shine? Fusion!" becomes "Why does the LED light bulb shine? Electricity!", highlighting the incompleteness. Another crosscheck is seeing how the non-uniform appearance of the Sun (limb darkening) is handled. With the edge/limb appearing darker and redder because of longer sight lines through cooler higher layers.

DoItToMe81 4y ago

140 megapixel computer interpretation of the sun. Much lamer.

cubefox 4y ago

I don't quite understand why it is apparently so hard to make a decent photo of the sun. Obviously you would need quite a strong filter to get it dark enough (otherwise the photo will be overexposed), and you need to zoom in since the sun appears not very large from Earth. But other than that?

dave333 4y ago

The bright streak above and to the left of the center of the image looks like a phoenix or maybe a dragon!

b3nji 4y ago

Would it be fair to say this is an impressive computer rendering of the sun? Are there any real, untouched, photos of the sun available? Is it true the sun is actually white?

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

You can almost see, were the center of gravity of the solar system steers the pot..