Paul Andrew is a retired photography teacher from a little English town called Dover who spends his days capturing images of the sun. From his garden, he shares the surface of the sun, more than 92 million miles from Earth, using his Lund 152 telescope.
'I use [my telescope] as often as possible when it is sunny,' shares Paul. 'The Sun is always changing and I never know what I am going to see.' During wintertime, he is unable to see much since the sun is low and many conditions block him from seeing the star clearly.
Recently, he captured a series of violent plasma projections and spewing eruptions on the Sun's surface. It's an incredible sight in contrast to the black background, the abyss of space. The sun's surface, called the photosphere, is where most of its radiation escapes from.
Different from other planets with a solid surface, the outer layer of the sun is active gas and plasma. The photosphere reaches about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
'Unlike many astronomical objects, the Sun is always changing and you never know what to expect from day to day,' he explained. After retirement, he thought of a way to combine his passion for astronomy with art.
Shifting Surface
The sun's behavior changes as it passes through its solar cycle. About every 11 years, the geographic poles change their magnetic polarity affecting the photosphere.
Quiet and calm movement transforms into violently active. Solar storms happen at the peak of activity, also known as a solar maxim. Sunspots appear temporarily in pairs when the surface temperature is reduced. Solar flares also occur in an instantaneous flash of increased brightness, happening near sunspot groups.
A third activity is coronal mass ejections (CME), or significant release of plasma alongside the magnetic field from the solar corona. The irregularities caused by the magnetic shift release massive amounts of particles and energy which reach Earth.
'This makes solar imaging a fascinating genre. However, when imaging from the UK there is always an on-going battle with poor and turbulent atmospheric conditions - called seeing - that degrade the finest detail on the Sun.'
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Solar Eclipse
Although Paul gets frustrated once in a while, he shared that 'when you get those brief moments of good steady seeing, and you successfully capture some fine detail, all the frustrations and your hard work becomes worth it.' He also said that the best time to capture images of the sun would be during summer while it is high in the air and there are barely any clouds.
In this month of June, stargazers and astronomy enthusiasts like Paul will have an exciting month as there will be a lunar eclipse on June 5 and a solar eclipse on June 21. Scientists are anticipating the solar eclipse to be a spectacular show because the world will witness a 'ring of fire.'
'I just find it incredible to think that the images many amateurs are currently producing are far superior to those taken by the world's largest telescopes just a few years ago,' explains Paul.
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