#chromosphere

[jareckiworld]

Angela Lane — Chromosphere (oil on birch plywood, 2023)

[nemfrog]

Spectrum of the solar chromosphere. Le Soleil. 1875.

Internet Archive

[whirligig-girl]

A Mass of Incandescent Gas

Next in my series of astronomy sketches drawn at the eyepiece of telescopes.

Yes that's right it's time for the Sun!

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! Looking at the Sun through a telescope can instantly and permanently blind you. DO NOT look at the Sun unless you've done the research and you're sure you know what you're doing. Solar observing is the only thing astronomers do that is unsafe.

The Sun is unique because it is the only star that we can look at up close. All other stars are so far away that they appear as point sources. On the Sun we can directly observe the interaction between stellar plasma and magnetic fields, which results in features like sunspots and prominences. It's also nice because it's one of the only objects you can see during the day.

More info and more sketches below the cut:

The images above were drawn on an especially active day for the Sun, near the peak of the 11-year-long solar activity cycle. There was an enormous amount of complexity in the sunspots and many of the sunspots were superlatively large.

There are two main types of solar telescopes: White light, and Hydrogen Alpha.

Left: my 6" Dobsonian with a 5" Baader AstroSolar white light filter. Right: my Coronado PST, a 40mm Hydrogen-alpha solar refractor.

In white light, we see structures on the Sun's 'surface,' the Photosphere. We see sunspots and faculae.

In H-alpha light, we see structures in the Sun's 'atmosphere,' the Chromosphere. We see sunspots, plages, filaments, and prominences.

Sunspots: Regions of intense magnetic field activity that interrupt the flow of heat from inside the star. The photosphere in the sunspot cools down from 5800K to around 3500K, which is still enough to glow, but gets darkened to black by the filter.

Faculae: Where does the energy blocked by sunpots end up? The faculae. These are web-like bright patches which are mostly visible at the limb (edge) of the Sun. Thanks to faculae, when there are sunspots, the Sun is actually slightly more luminous than when there are none. Faculae are hard to spot in the more common yellow-tinted white light filter. They're reasonably easy in a blue-tinted one, but I am privileged to own a Baader AstroSolar filter which gives a true color pure white image.

Plages: More regions of magnetic field activity that result in a brightening of the chromosphere.

Prominence: These are eruptions of material where the magnetic fields pull hydrogen into huge loops that are often larger than the Earth. When they're seen against space, they look light; when they're seen against the sun, they look like dark scratches and we call them filaments.

Occasionally you'll see astrophotos of the Sun's chromosphere that are colored orange or even yellow. The actual color of the chromosphere is bright pink, and you can sometimes see it during Total Solar Eclipses. But the brightest single wavelength of the chromosphere, the one targeted by solar filters, is the Hydrogen Alpha line, which is a deep deep red. I've tried to replicate that in the digital colorizations of my pencil sketches.

My log book for the chromosphere drawings is a midtone grey sketchbook. I use black sharpie for the space-black, white colored pencils for the plages and prominences, and black colored pencils for the filaments and sunspots. The paper also has a kinda hairy texture to it, which is nice because it looks a little like the supergranulation on the chromosphere.

You can see a few filaproms--filaments that are visible on the limb both against space (light) and against the sun (dark).

Here's one from 2021-Jan-6. No sunspots this day, just filaments and some very nice prominences.

Here's one from December 30, 2020.

The Coronado PST Solar telescope was a christmas gift from my mother that year. She got it at a massive discount (These things usually go for like $700, I think she paid $200) because it came from the collection of a local observatory host who'd died.

2021-January-9. Decent proms but not much going on otherwise.

The prominence on the upper right was very notable. It even had these sort of puffs of 'smoke' trailing behind it so to speak. It also changed hour to hour. Features on the Sun can move very rapidly indeed, and it's rare to be able to see changes on a celestial body in almost real time.

2021-Febuary-17. There was a really really good filament on this day.

[xeno42alpha]

back to your regularily sheduled seahorses surface of the sun?

[sxpxrmxrgxr]

[thepastisalreadywritten]

If you want to support my work, the best way to do that is to get one of my limited edition fine art prints for your wall! This one will be available for the next few days here:

https://cosmicbackground.io/pages/ea_defeating-gravity

[shoubuster]

Came across this in my recommendations and it's a real dang good cartoon. Great all around. Went into full werewolf-tearing-off-his-shirt mode when I found out that the theme was composed and partially sang by The Go! Team.

[stoovrs]

today is #IndieAnimationDay and i thought it would be nice to highlight 4 immensely underrated independent projects through fanart! they’re all available on youtube and/or newgrounds so go check them out

YUKI 7 @chromosphere-la

based on concepts by @kevindart, this one is a stylish micro-series with some slick action, beautiful 3D animation, and a sweet 70s aesthetic. also check out the new series, hotel kolkata

MICRO SERIES I

MICRO SERIES II: HOTEL KOLKATA (in progress!)

BARBER WESTCHESTER @jonniphillipsart

part of the larger BLINDFOLD series since 2015, this film is similarly unique in its direction and visual style, and it’s as brilliant as it is captivating. imo my favorite of the series has to be the WASTELAND anthology.

THE BLINDFOLD SERIES

SUBLO AND TANGY MUSTARD @aaron-long

this one is just filled to the brim with expressive character animation and some fantastic writing and storytelling. on top of being funny as hell, it’s also got a lot of depth and character growth. criminally overlooked

COMPLETE SERIES (on season 3)

THE DUST PIXIES (anthony liotta)

part virtual band, part wacky cartoon show, part whatever. this only has a couple shorts and a pilot, but its surreal nature and vibey sound already make this one of a kind. there’s an album too!

PILOT + SHORTS

“music to sell tickets to” available on bandcamp and streaming