The videos below are complied from still images of the Sun taken in the Hydrogen-Alpha light spectrum. Although I have a solar telescope myself, for the images on this page I used image data from the National Solar Observatory Integrated Synoptic Program (NISP) which is a collection of H-Alpha telescopes located around the world to provide close to 24-hour-a-day solar observation.
THE SUN IN 2021
The most amazing object in the Solar System shines down on us every day and we scarcely pay it any attention. So for the first half of 2021, while we’ve continued to deal with Covid, impeachment and the world waking up to NFTs, this is what’s been happening on the surface of the Sun.
This video was compiled from 2,000 images from the National Space Organisation NISP program. The video covers the period from January 1st to June 30th with 12 images per day taken at 2 hour intervals from one of 7 solar telescopes in different parts of the world. All of the images were captured in the hydrogen alpha spectrum and each was manually selected and processed in Photoshop before being compiled into video in Final Cut Pro.
Audio backing track used under license.
This video is available as an NFT on my Foundation page.
DAILIES
These images were all taken by a single telescope in the NISP program on a single day. They are created from images taken over an 8 to 10 hour period, condensed into a few tens of seconds. Although the Sun doesn’t rotate much in a single day, so you get to see the same features throughout the video, you get to see how these features change. The selection below highlights both sunspot and solar prominence activity.