Astrophotographer Captures Solar Tornado on the Sun That Stands Over 14-Earths-Tall

Photo credit: Andrew McCarthy
Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy teamed up with Jason Guenzel to capture a solar tornado on the Sun that stands over 14-Earths-tall. This 140-megapixel masterpiece is comprised of more than 90,000 photographs and took 5-days to fully capture the star in a way you’ve never seen before.

I spent 3 hours yesterday with my solar telescope pointed at a tall tornado-y looking thing on the sun. This 14-Earths-tall swirling column of plasma was raining moon-sized gobs of incandescent material on the sun. I can't imagine a more hellish place. pic.twitter.com/dewzNEAEJA

— Andrew McCarthy (@AJamesMcCarthy) March 18, 2023

It was captured using a modified telescope and then jointly processed to reveal the layers of intricate details within the solar chromosphere. The two atmospheric layers were carefully aligned in a scientifically plausible way using NASA’s SOHO data as a reference. The final image that you see is essentially a blend of science and art, or a one-of-a kind astrophoto, as the Sun will never look like this again in our lifetime.

Rayleigh scattering makes it yellow, my filters make it red. Split the difference, it’s orange. No BXT was used here! Some minimal AI denoising and a whole slew of proprietary technique,” said McCarthy.