A Different View of Our Sun image

A Different View of Our Sun


Acquisition Details
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Description

High resolution echelle spectrum of our sun, 5-minute sequence sampled every 15 seconds to measure changes in solar flux. Specifically examining Fe I line at 495.76 nm. The equipment creates a spectrum where the vertical dimension of each echelle order "band" corresponds to positions across the solar disk. The horizontal dimension corresponds to highly dispersed wavelengths, stacked in typical echelle fashion. A Canon Digital Rebel camera with IR cut filter removed was used to capture the spectral images of the sun. 100 iso, 1/250 second exposure for each frame. Open source tracker.jar software (Prof. Doug Brown, Cabrillo College) was used to quantify the intensity of the Fe I line across the solar disk, and then create a time series for the plot of varying flux. It is possible this variation is due to many other factors, such as atmospheric turbulence. Nevertheless, the period of variation corresponds roughly to known 3 - 10 milliHertz oscillations. The main echelle spectrum reveals the large number of element lines present in our sun's chromosphere, including the main Fraunhofer lines such as Hydrogen alpha and beta, and Sodium D lines, well-resolved here. Also observed are Earth's atmospheric oxygen and water vapor, found in the red and near-infrared regions at the top of the echellegraph.

  • User details
  • Ron Masters
  • Ron Masters
  • November 8, 2015