[HN Gopher] 140 Megapixel Picture of the Sun
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       140 Megapixel Picture of the Sun
        
       Author : skilled
       Score  : 151 points
       Date   : 2023-03-26 11:31 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (old.reddit.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com)
        
       | JKCalhoun wrote:
       | I wonder why we can't _model_ the sun. It would seem to be
       | simpler than say modeling the weather on Earth.
        
         | thfuran wrote:
         | Why would it be simple?
        
           | macintux wrote:
           | No butterflies.
        
         | brilee wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | > 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.
        
         | bobbylarrybobby wrote:
         | 1. The sun has a (weak) magnetic field that affects how its gas
         | moves, which we don't fully understand. 2. There is a Coriolis
         | force all the way down to the center of the sun, which makes
         | the gas move in weird ways. 3. As a sphere of fluid, the sun
         | supports vibrational modes that we are only just beginning to
         | understand. (See work by e.g., Conny Aerts) 4. We can't really
         | see into the sun's interior, although understanding the
         | vibrational modes will help.
        
         | elteto wrote:
         | What does "model" even mean here?
        
           | tintedfireglass wrote:
           | make the sun into a set of mathematical equations, like the
           | way gargantuan was modeled in interstellar
           | https://github.com/sirxemic/Interstellar or the way
           | schrodinger wave equations model an atom. [libretexts
           | schrodinger equation] https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/Uni
           | versity_of_California...
        
             | elteto wrote:
             | My question still stands? _What_ aspect are you modeling
             | exactly? The Sun as a celestial body? The fluid dynamics of
             | the surface? The nuclear process going on in the core?
             | 
             | You can't just entirely "model" something as complex as a
             | star anymore than you can do large scale simulations of the
             | universe at the atomic level. If we could we would be much
             | more ahead as a civilization.
        
         | lunfard000 wrote:
         | Anecdotally, Argentina tried it[0]. The project was sold to
         | Peron as way to create artificial suns.
         | 
         | 0:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huemul_Project
        
       | DoItToMe81 wrote:
       | 140 megapixel _computer interpretation_ of the sun. Much lamer.
        
       | tiffanyh wrote:
       | Is this a "raw" photo or has a bunch of computional photography /
       | AI been applied?
        
         | skilled wrote:
         | 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-...
        
         | antisthenes wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | hjkl0 wrote:
           | 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 wrote:
             | 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
        
           | SomeHacker44 wrote:
           | 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 wrote:
             | 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 wrote:
               | > _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 wrote:
             | > 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.
        
         | bobbylarrybobby wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | jug wrote:
           | Who are they cheating? If they are upfront about the process,
           | hardly the observer, or..?
        
           | yokoprime wrote:
           | Why is it considered cheating? What is it cheating against?
        
           | macinjosh wrote:
           | Or the guy is just having fun enjoying his hobby.
        
             | florbo wrote:
             | The photographer is very upfront about the process, too.
        
           | rvnx wrote:
           | 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 wrote:
             | Erm, that point has come since quite a while.
             | 
             | Recent controversy over fake sony moonshots:
             | 
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35107601
        
               | unwind wrote:
               | *Samsung, though. Not Sony.
        
               | rvnx wrote:
               | True, this was a fascinating one :)
        
       | gonzo41 wrote:
       | Great image. and, SpaceX should totally offer cremations where
       | you can get shot into the sun.
        
         | kwonkicker wrote:
         | Food your repeat that please?!
        
       | cwillu wrote:
       | "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 wrote:
       | Make sure you view it with appropriate shielding for your eyes!
        
       | mncharity wrote:
       | 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/...
       | [2]
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Sun_in_white_light.jp...
       | used on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun [3]
       | https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/16622/need-help-si...
        
         | kelsolaar wrote:
         | "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.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | aaron695 wrote:
           | [dead]
        
       | kid64 wrote:
       | Wait so did he make the full-resolution, uncropped image
       | available?
        
         | skilled wrote:
         | I'm not sure if this is full-resolution, but the uncropped
         | image was posted on his Twitter account:
         | 
         | https://twitter.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/163864845900280627...
        
         | AkshatJ27 wrote:
         | Uncropped:
         | 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
         | 
         | The print ready 139 megapixel version costs 50$
        
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       (page generated 2023-03-26 23:02 UTC)