Trestan

@flare

He/him staring at the sun academically... flare.observer

372 Folgt434 Follower81 Posts

Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir flare.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Trestan@flare· 1d

Inverted and grayscale versions

Same as original image but with inverted colors

Trestan@flare· 1d

Large solar prominence from 2024-03-24 ☀️🔭

Red false-color image of a large solar prominence captured with an amateur Hα telescope. The solar disk, which was overexposed, has been masked.

Trestan@flare· 14d

My first first-author paper, "SADCat: A Catalog of Supra-Arcade Downflow Events in Solar Flares", is now published in Solar Physics! Dr. Ryan French (@ryanjfrench.bsky.social) and I present a catalog of 178 solar flares with visible SADs as a resource for the broader solar flare community. ☀️ 1/4

Trestan@flare· 20d

Growth and evolution of NOAA solar active region 14493 in the corona (left; extreme ultraviolet, SDO/AIA 211 Å) and its associated sunspots in the photosphere (right; visible light, SDO/HMI continuum) between 2026 July 18 and 22. ☀️🔭

Trestan@flare· 21d

Sunspots, filaments, and plage flanking the eastern arc of the solar equator captured yesterday (2026-07-20) in Hα and oriented so that the equator splits the image vertically down the middle. ☀️🔭

A false-color red Hα image of the Sun's eastern equatorial region rotated 90° clockwise (i.e., south is left and north is right). Prominent bright plage are visible to the south of the equator with dark filaments weaving between individual bright patches. A single active region is visible north of the equator with two large sunspots. To the west of the active region is a large jagged-looking filament.

Trestan@flare· 25d

Wildfire smoke and clouds passing in front of the Sun this morning

A photo of the sky. The Sun appears at the center of the image as a bright featureless disk. Wildfire smoke and clouds are spread across the sky giving the solar disk an orange tinge. The image is framed by the silhouettes of leaves and branches.

Trestan@flare· 27d

Light wildfire smoke over New Jersey this afternoon

Clouds and the afternoon sun viewed through light wildfire smoke

Petting a black cat lying on its back. Its green eyes are looking up at the sky.

Trestan@flare· Apr 23

The decaying solar active region that formed within a coronal hole from last week sans JP2 compression artifacts ☀️

Pink false-color image of a solar active region as it appeared in the SDO/AIA 211 Å filter on 2026-04-14.

Trestan@flare· Apr 18

This region is likely the decaying remains of AR 14400 which we saw emerge within a coronal hole about one solar rotation ago (~27 days). ARs that form in this way typically have loops that fan out in all directions from the region's center like the tentacles of a sea anemone, hence the term.

False-color full-disk image of the Sun as it appeared on 2026-03-21. AR 14400 appears at the center of the solar disk as a small bright patch surrounded on one side by a dark coronal hole. The image was taken by SDO/AIA in 211 Å.

False-color full-disk image of the Sun as it appeared on 2026-04-17, a full solar rotation after the previous image. AR 14400 again appears at the center of the solar disk but this time as a more diffuse bright patch surrounded on all sides by a dark coronal hole. The image was taken by SDO/AIA in 211 Å.

Trestan@flare· Apr 18

Fittingly, the patch of bright loops in the lobster coronal hole's clutch is a decaying anemone region. ☀️

False-color image of the anemone active region. The region appears as a patch of bright coronal loops almost completely surrounded by a dark coronal hole. The image was taken by SDO/AIA in 211 Å on 2026-04-14T20:01 UT.

Trestan@flare· Feb 9

Very clear solar physics bubble next to "Professional Astronomers & Astrophysicists" #heliophysics

Bluesky Map around the region labeled "Professional Astronomers & Astrophysicists". Solar physics-focused accounts seem to be clustered in the bottom right corner.

Same as previous image but with three solar accounts highlighted.

Trestan@flare· Feb 5

The "I am going to drink ocean water" guy is still active and uploads both.

Trestan@flare· Jan 2

Here is how I have been contributing to Wikipedia in 2025. Happy New Year! #wikipediaYIR

Here is how I have been contributing to Wikipedia in 2025! Edits: 585, Discussions: 74, Thanks: 7, Thanked: 3 #wikipediaYIR

Trestan@flare· Oct 8

They existed. This image is from 2012 at the latest

SOFTWARE TERMINOLOGY
Then: application, program, operating system, script, shell, batch file, compiler, daemon, service, game, patch, software.
Now: app, app, app, app, app, app, app, app, app, app, app, app.

Trestan@flare· Jul 29

Testing this with SDO/AIA imagery of a series of eruptions from 2023 ☀️

Trestan@flare· Jul 18

Trestan@flare· Jul 18

Not the usual Sun I study

Seven sunflower heads, three of which have bloomed, and one blurred bee

Trestan@flare· May 21

Small steam devils forming from the fog above a pool (water temp was 76°F and outside air temp was 56°F)

A grayscale image of a pool surface covered in fog and illuminated by a flashlight. A single steam devil is visible in the center of the image and appears as an elongated tube.

... Three steam devils are visible in the center of the image.

... Two steam devils are visible in the center.

... One steam devil interacts with another, taller steam devil.

Trestan@flare· Apr 5

I just realized that the CU Boulder guest Wi-Fi default gateway is blocking all of my NTP packets... so I am right next to NIST physically but am not allowed to synchronize with their public time servers? 128.138.140.44 is utcnist.colorado.edu

Wireshark packet analysis showing NTP requests from me (10.218.195.150) to utcnist.colorado.edu (128.138.140.44) and responses from the default gateway (10.218.194.1) indicating that "Destination unreachable (Communication administratively filtered)".

Trestan@flare· Mar 25

Hα flare ribbons observed between the two peaks of a double-peak soft-X-ray flare of GOES class X1.0 and M7.3 on 2024 June 1. ☀️ #astrophotography

Image of active region 13679 in the south-west quadrant of the solar disk taken using a hobby telescope with a hydrogen-alpha filter. The image, which was originally in grayscale, has been colored red.

Trestan@flare· Mar 2

New Moon illuminated by earthshine visible in non-operational GOES-19/CCOR-1 data from 27 February 2025 via @noaa.gov ☀️🔭

Trestan@flare· Feb 2

Once again defeated by compression. Here is a nicer looking screenshot mid-eruption.

Still image of an eruption over the Sun's northwestern limb observed by SDO/AIA in 171 Å on 2022-11-18 at 09:19:33.343 UT.

Trestan@flare· Feb 2

Here is an eruption over the Sun's northwestern limb observed in SDO/AIA's 171 Å passband a couple of years ago. Found this when I was cleaning an SSD, so I thought I'd share. (Footage courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA science team.) ☀️🔭

Trestan@flare· Jan 17

This diagram I made and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons when I was 16 ended up being used in a peer-reviewed popular-science book. I dislike how the diagram turned out in hindsight, but I am flattered that someone decided it was usable for publication.

A diagram of the Sun's magnetic field illustrating the omega effect. The original SVG file, licensed under CC-BY-4.0, can be found here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sun%27s_magnetic_field_after_omega_effect.svg

Trestan@flare· Dec 26

Here is how I have been contributing to Wikipedia in 2024. This year I also worked on two research projects at LASP, completed my 2nd and 3rd semesters of college, and started a UROP-funded assistantship. It was a productive year for me personally. #wikipediaYIR

Wikipedia year in review for user CoronalMassAffection. They made 514 edits, 75 talk page edits, gave 19 thanks, received 13 thanks, longest streak was 16 days, and made 26 template edits. Generated using https://wikipediayir.netlify.app/

Trestan@flare· Dec 25

Happy holidays ☀️ (Data were acquired by GONG instruments operated by NISP/NSO/AURA/NSF with contribution from NOAA; see alt text)

A silhouette of Santa's sleigh superimposed on a hydrogen-alpha image of the solar chromosphere as observed by NSO/GONG at Learmonth Solar Observatory on 2024-12-25 02:21:42 UT.

This work utilizes GONG data obtained by the NSO Integrated Synoptic Program, managed by the National Solar Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc. under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation and with contribution from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The GONG network of instruments is hosted by the Big Bear Solar Observatory, High Altitude Observatory, Learmonth Solar Observatory, Udaipur Solar Observatory, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, and Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory.

Silhouette image via https://freepngimg.com/png/49190-santa-sleigh-free-hd-image

Trestan@flare· Dec 12

My version of the three kitten brothers meme ☀️

Three kittens. The first says "I'm solar energetic particle", the second says "I'm flare", and the third says "I'm coronal mass ejection". A caption below them reads "the solar storm brothers".

Trestan@flare· Dec 5

Most recent edit summary on En Wikipedia's article for SOHO: "this is not dragonball". lol ☀️

Screenshot of an English Wikipedia article "diff" page for the "Solar and Heliospheric Observatory" article showing the changes between two recent edits. An editor replaces "over 5,000 comets" with "more than 5,000 comets" and leaves an edit summary reading "this is not dragonball".

Trestan@flare· Nov 27

I was downloading AIA data from JSOC at the exact moment it went down and had no idea this was the cause. I hope everyone is alright.

My Python interpreter when I lost connection to JSOC.

Trestan@flare· Nov 27

Here is the full text. It can also be found on page 88 of this 1972 NOAA technical memorandum: repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/18...