Animation of the rotation of the Sun for 33 consecutive days

[Peter Rosen]

Hi all,

10 years ago I started a crazy project to animate the surface of Jupiter from our own images taken from a mostly cloudy Sweden and over a period of 3 month, "crazy" because starting out I had just a vague idea of how to proceed so it took me 6 month full time of painstaking processing and problem solving. But finally the project was rounded up and I uploaded it to Vimeo under the title "Voyager 3 Project":

4 years later I did a follow up using images from some of the best amateurs from around the world thinking that with the acquired experience it would take me less time but with the greatly increase in details of the high resolution images I finished working on that project for a full year!

I called it "A Journey to Jupiter" and uploaded it to Youtube:

Some years ago I bought a second hand Lunt THa 60mm with a double stack front mounted 50 mm tilt module that I enjoy a lot with the increase in solar activity so I thought about making an animation of the solar rotation and drifting surface features as well as the evolution of the prominences over a couple of days. I started out on the 11th of May as the weather forecast looked god for some days ahead, very rare event here in Stockholm. So I was on a good start but then the weather started changing to more overcast combined to strong gusts of wind making the setup shake. But I managed nevertheless to find small holes in the cloud layers even if it meant waiting for an hour or two and this went on for 33 days in a row until the 12th of June, with the exception of the 5th of June that was completely overcast. On some days I was only able to capture half a sequence through high altitude clouds but it resulted in an image that I could use and that was way better than none.

Animating the rotation of the Sun is quite a different story from Jupiter. The Suns rotation is about 24 days measured at the equator vs Jupiters just under 10 hours. The surface structures on the Sun can change suddenly in a matter of minutes or hours while on Jupiter they mostly drift slowly in the direction of rotation. And then there are the Solar prominences while on Jupiter I only had to care about the planetary body itself. With all these new factors I still could build on the previous experience and round up the project in just 6 weeks, although it was hard work to the  wee small hours.

The solar maximum is expected somewhere between now and the beginning of 2026 so I will hopefully be ready when it comes. To improve the movement of the surface structures I will optimally have to take 2 or even 3 captures a day if it happens in summertime when the Sun rises at 03:30 and sets at 22:10

Long story short, I just uploaded the animation to Youtube and hope you will enjoy. It is best viewed on a big computer screen and at high resolution. It is up to 4K:

/*Peter Rosén

(President of the Solar Section of SAAF, the Swedish Amateur Astronomy  Association)

 

Edited July 1 by Peter Rosen

[Rusted]

Fascinating!

You managed to expose the variation in solar surface velocity with latitude.

Best seen on the approaching limb as a distortion. Is this effect real?

[JOC]

That's quite amazing and to think it's been done by someone amateur from their own back yard is quite something.

[Clarkey]

That is quite incredible. Well done!

I do the easy DSO stuff. Set the rig going...... Off to bed. The sun is just something that stops me walking into stuff. But this is on another level - really impressive.

[josefk]

Awesome @Peter Rosen i thoroughly enjoyed all three of these. Excellent.

[melsmore]

Brilliant, I really enjoyed these. Thanks for posting.

[Peter Rosen]

When you have worked for several weeks almost full time on a project and finally put it online, these overwhelming positive comments really mean a lot so a big thanks to all of you. 

On 01/07/2024 at 07:26, Rusted said:

Fascinating!

You managed to expose the variation in solar surface velocity with latitude.

Best seen on the approaching limb as a distortion. Is this effect real?

Do you mean the difference in the rotation velocity at the equator, a little more than 24 days, and at the poles, around 28 days?

No, I did not care about the poles as the main visible features are closer to the equator and anyways it is automatically taken care of as I have a correct image once a day and any error at the poles from one day to the next should be so minimal that it is unnoticeable.

But I have used morphing techniques that very closely renders the 3D rotation while being just 2D and that implies a bigger strain on the left approaching limb. The improvement that I have imagined for the next rendition would be to use more control points on the left side and take 2 to 3 images every day to get smaller intervalls and thus smaller motions in between the real images. That would also be a big improvement for the motion of the prominences. 

I hope these comments are relevant to your observation.

/*Peter R

Edited July 2 by Peter Rosen
grammar

[rrb24]

Absolutely incredible 🙇‍♂️👏

[carastro]

Absolutely fascinating and amazing. 

[tomato]

Fantastic project, so much work in there, thanks for posting.

[geoflewis]

What amazing work Peter, with mind blowing results. All 3 videos are stunning, thanks for sharing them.

[Planetary Observer]

Brilliant!!

[Bluemoonjim]

Extraordinary! Thank you for sharing your work

[lunator]

Very impressive video 😀