The Sun is one of the most familiar sights in space, but this photo from one skilled photographer captures it as you've never seen it before. Compared to the rest of outer space, our Solar System is nothing but an impossibly small speck. Its 287.46 billion kilometer diameter sounds gargantuan on its own, yet it's nothing relative to how astronomers measure the rest of space. For example, the Milky Way galaxy is about 52,850 light-years. On this scale, scientists estimate that the Solar System is anywhere between 0.5 and 1 light-year. The Solar System is even smaller compared to the known universe, which is believed to be roughly 93 billion light-years.
Despite its amazingly small size, the Solar System manages to do something not found anywhere else in space — it's home to the only known planet with life. Thanks to its atmosphere, gravitational power, and close relationship with the Moon, life on Earth exists where it's seemingly impossible anywhere else. A big reason for this is the Sun. Earth is at the perfect distance from the Sun — being far enough away that it's not burning up, yet close enough that our planet isn't cold and desolate like Mars. Without the Sun, life on Earth would cease to exist.
Looking to honor the power of the Sun in a photo that does it justice, photographer Andrew McCarthy did just that. McCarthy recently shared a photo of the Sun on his Instagram page that shows the star in an amazing amount of detail. The entire surface of the sun is filled with firey swirls, black spots are inverted to represent especially bright areas on the surface, and there are even some visible solar flares bursting away from it. The end result is nothing short of amazing. From Earth, the Sun looks like nothing but a bright circle with no fine details. As McCarthy's photo proves, however, the exact opposite is true. The Sun is a rich, swirling ball of light and heat that looks so much more powerful than it often gets credit for.
How This Incredible Photo Of The Sun Was Captured
A picture like this is undoubtedly impressive on its own, but as usually the case, how a photo like this comes to be is just as inspiring. As McCarthy explains in his Instagram post, he "captured around 150,000 images of the sun with extreme magnification using a modified telescope." McCarthy then took all of those images, combined them, and the end result is the single image seen in this article. While the entire resolution isn't visible here, the final file size for the photo ended up being 300MP large.
Folks who regularly keep an eye on space-related photos are probably familiar with McCarthy's work. Towards the end of November, McCarthy captured a jaw-dropping composite image of last month's partial lunar eclipse. McCarthy's also recently snapped views of the Orion Nebula and Orion's Belt.
Source: Andrew McCarthy