This is not really a stereo … well, only if you are brave ! OK ?
Made from two images captured during the transit by SDO. The left one was taken using light in a narrow wavelength range, centred around 171 angstroms, and the right image is in light of wavelength 304 angstroms. An angstrom is one ten billionth of a metre. Both these wavelengths are actually in the Ultraviolet part of the spectrum, which is invisible to human eyes. So I’m not quite sure what these apparent colours mean ! In rough terms, by choosing different wavelengths to look at, we are seeing activity at different depths in the Sun’s outer layers.
Yep, this is a pretty psychedelic stereo ! But when you get used to it, it’s quite informative … showing which parts of the structure of the Sun’s surface show up at these wavelengths. And there is the black dot which is Venus, traversing the disc … for the last time this century.
Bri
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