Solar observations – summer ’24…

I’ve been indulging my love for Astronomy with a little 70mm / f5.7 refractor that I picked up at the start of the year. This summer was great for observing the Sun via eyepiece projection (don’t try that at home unless you know what you’re doing… I melted the inside of a 10mm eyepiece while I was getting used to this method!), and it has been fascinating watching sunspots evolving over time.

Here’s a couple of my pictures:
* The first one is over-exposed and shows the phenomenon of “limb darkening” – the edge of the sun looks darker than the middle because we’re looking through less of the solar atmosphere.

* The second is an example of the sunspots that have been visible this year. In the larger box on the RHS with 2 sunspots, the darkest area (umbra) is where the magnetic field lines are nearly vertical and we’re seeing deeper into the Sun’s atmosphere than the greyer around surrounding it (penumbra) where the field lines are more inclined.

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