Veteran astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy of Arizona unveiled this spectacular photo of Jupiter on September 17, 2022. But what you see is not just one photo, it’s a combination of hundreds of thousands of images.
It took nearly an entire night to capture nearly 600,000 photos of Jupiter, from which the sharpest image of Jupiter was assembled. The image was published by McCarthy on Twitter. This was taken with an 11-inch telescope and a camera that Andrew usually uses for deep space photography.
Photographer Andrew McCarthy is known for his astronomical images that he takes from his backyard in Sacramento, California, USA. He recently added two more stunning images to his portfolio: ultra-sharp views of the International Space Station (ISS) against the backdrop of the Sun and Moon. Given that the ISS passes by both celestial bodies in less than a second for someone looking from Earth, it’s a very difficult image to capture.
McCarthy first managed to capture the ISS passing the Sun on October 6, 2020.
This image was taken simultaneously with two telescopes: one with a white light filter for ISS details, and the other with a solar telescope with an alpha hydrogen filter for details of the Sun’s surface. By blending the images, Andrew gets a clear and detailed image of the transit.
A snapshot of the Moon consists of 280,000 images.
Andrew McCarthy has published a new image – this time a detailed portrait of the Sun. In the pictures, you can see the celestial body in the maximum approximation. So it was seen, perhaps, only research probes. The photo with a resolution of 164 megapixels allows you to zoom in and examine the details on the surface of our main Star. In particular, in the image of the Sun in the liquid-heated plasma can be seen a whole group of dark spots. These are areas of output of strong magnetic fields and one of the main indicators of solar magnetic activity.
To achieve such detail Andrew only took several hours to take the picture.
Image credit:
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