What a disingenuous comment. It's not a generative AI image. It's not something someone drew/painted. It's photographic data combined together.
If you want to be pedantic, every single picture ever taken with a digital camera is digitally modified. Every single image shot on film and scanned to be used on a computer is digitally modified.
Just because you can't take a photo of the sun anywhere close to this does not mean others of us cannot, and does not make their actual images of the sun not real. Using proper filters so you do not melt your equipment allows for images of the photosphere to be captured. Using the moon to filter the photosphere during an eclipse allows the corona to be seen. It's not like it's not there except during an eclipse. It's just too faint to be captured without the filter.
That's what the SRO uses a cornograph to block the photosphere at all times to be able to image the corona.
Imaging the sun is very fun and challenging, and I'd suggest you'd learn a lot from reading up on it. Whether you'd actually enjoy it is beyond the scope of this forum
Sure, but they're not just combining, they're selecting for maximal artistic effect.
> A geometrically altered image of the 2017 eclipse as an artistic element in this composition to display an otherwise invisible structure. Great care was taken to align the two atmospheric layers in a scientifically plausible way using NASA's SOHO data as a reference.
https://cosmicbackground.io/products/fusion-of-helios
I mean, take a look at some of the photographers other work...
https://cosmicbackground.io/products/tales-from-the-solar-sy...
Okay and?
What do you mean, and? They're clarifying the original point, as was expressly requested in the parent comment. The image undoubtedly has some amount of "artistic freedom" taken. What threshold decides when an image becomes more art than science is a parameter that each person is free to decide for themselves. I think it's absolutely relevant to discussion to point out that there might be more "artistic freedom" in this image than most might believe, especially when the post is about photos of the sun of a much more scientific and exact nature.
My point is in what was is “well actually it’s not technically a photograph” helpful, interesting, or relevant contribution to discussion?
Great. It’s not strictly a graph of photons. Zero people are using this stitched together image to perform science. Moreover, virtually every single space image intended for public consumption has been converted from UV/radio/infrared into the visible spectrum, retouched, stitched together as a composite, or experienced some other form of artistic manipulation.
Nobody cares. Nobody should care. This is a thoroughly inconsequential hill to die on and a completely pointless bit of pedantry.