Re-processed Image: February 2024 Solar Animation

[AstroBee]

This solar disc animation was created from the daily images provided by SpaceWeather.com. It encompasses the entire month of February, 2024.

[StarHugger]

Spaceweather is certainly a great resource and solarham.net bodes well also,

Nice animation Greg...

[Thefatkitty]

Very cool Greg; a sign of a true Solarhead! 3576 and 90 were almost mesmerizing.... I have to say, I'm curious as to what you used to do that; it came out great!

Thanks for that and all the best,

[messier 111]

cool work , thx .

[AstroBee]

I have to say, I'm curious as to what you used to do that; it came out great!

Hey Mark,
The process will take longer to explain than to actually do it but here's the steps.
Go to SpaceWeather.com and using their archive feature on the right column, load each day.

Click on the Sun image on the left side and then right-click and "save image as.." giving it a number. I just numbered the file by the day of the month. Make sure to use "01" instead of "1" so in a future step they all sort properly.

Once you have a folder with each day in it...

Next steps involve PhotoShop for me but there are other programs that can do these steps.
Open Photoshop and go to File/Scripts/Load Files Into Stack

Load all of your files. For this sample I only loaded 4 but you would load the entire month.

Now you end up with a single file with how ever many layers you are trying to animate.

Next, Go to Window/Timeline and at the bottom a panel will open. Click on the button in the middle of that panel that says "Create Frame Animation"

At the bottom on the timeline click the Plus button to add a keyframe

Then, on the layers tab click to hide your top frame "01" and on the timeline click the Plus button to add a second frame.

Your timeline will look like this now.


This next part is a bit time consuming and not absolutely necessary but if you want the same dissolving effect between frames you need to tell it to do that. And it's done manually between each frame so kinda a pain.
At the bottom on the timeline just to the left of the Plus button there's an icon that looks like a comet. Click that and this window opens up.

I choose 5 frames but you can select fewer for a faster dissolve or more for a slower dissolve.
You then end up with 7 frames. You first and last and the 5 frames between that are the dissolve. Those frames are a mix of frame 1 and 7 with varying degree to create the effect of the dissolve.


Keep repeating these last few steps until you end up with a huge timeline. 29 individual days for February but 5 dissolve frames in between each day.
There's standard play, stop, reverse buttons at the bottom so you can see how things are progressing.
Not the key to making the animated GIF. You cannot just "save as"
You have to go to File/Export/Save for Web (Legacy)


Save your file as a GIF and then you are done.

[Graeme1858]

Great animation Greg and an excellent tutorial.

Graeme

[Thefatkitty]

Greg, thank you so much! That is certainly detailed and must have taken you some time to do. Much appreciated

All the best,

[AstroBee]

Greg, thank you so much! That is certainly detailed and must have taken you some time to do. Much appreciated

All the best,

You're welcome Mark.
Yes, it took almost as long to repeat the process and do the screencaps and explanations as the original animation took. But I enjoy showing folks tricks like this.

Clear Skies ~
Greg