Watch: Solar storm eruption in a high

SOLAR Chromosphere Time Lapse Shows the Sun Activity in Motion on October 2023 from Miguel Claro on Vimeo.

"I took a solar timelapse of the whole disc of the sun on the 12th of October 2023, which revealed many fascinating features in motion, such as eruptive prominences, filaments, active regions with minor flares, small spicules waving like hair in the wind, and a delicate curved line of plasma hovering hundreds of kilometers above the sun's surface, held by the strong magnetic fields, until it was released into space in a flash," writes Claro.

The astrophotographer explains that the video depicts the chromosphere while the sun spins over three hours. "The timelapse sequence was shot from Dark Sky Alqueva territory with a Player One Saturn-M SQR camera and a Lunt telescope LS100, producing three terabytes of data," he adds. 

"The final outcome is a 5K high-resolution solar movie consisting of 246 images over a period of about three hours, between UT 11:05 and UT 14:08." 

Claro has a history of capturing the sun's stunning beauty. Before this timelapse, he shared some still images of the sun, a novel perspective on the recent annular eclipse, and a virtual reality VR360° of the Earth's star based on one of his images.

In another stunning timelapse of two years ago, Claro shows a huge loop of plasma swirling above the sun's surface. The feature, known as a solar prominence, was visible on February 6 and February 7, 2022, Claro wrote on his website. The prominence then erupted, sending a giant cloud of plasma known as a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space.

Giants of the Solar System - Two Days in a Row Shows a Large Prominence Evolving from Miguel Claro on Vimeo.

Claro carefully observed the prominence over those two days, capturing images he stitched into a timelapse video showing the feature's behavior and evolution. "The final result is a 4K high-resolution solar movie comprising around 2.5 hours for each day, with a total of 5 hours of images," he wrote.

"According to my measurements in pixels, the size of this prominence … was about 10x the size [of] our planet Earth, in height, but stretching around the sun's limb for thousands of kilometers," Claro added.

One of the prominence photos — the one featured as the lead image for this story — was recognized by the Royal Observatory of Greenwich's Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2022 competition, he said; the image received a "Highly Commended" distinction in the contest's "Our Sun" category.

Claro captured the timelapse video from Portugal's Alqueva Dark Sky Reserve using a QUY5III174M camera and a Sky-Watcher Esprit 120ED Professional telescope with a Daystar Quark Prominence filter.