Sunspots by JoeBlack

Photography • World Events/Social Commentary • posted on Oct 26, 2003

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Description

This is the first photograph I've uploaded here :D My hobby is astronomy and the recent solar storm warnings spurred me to see what the fuss was about. The image shows 2 major sunspot groupings, the larger of which is believed to have triggered the solar outburst that the Earth later encountered. The image is back to front, so the spots on the left are in fact the leading group. From edge to edge the Sun is about 1.4million km in diamter, and so the size of even the smallest spots here exceeds the diameter of the Earth many times. Kinda gets our problems in perspective! If you look closely you see that the spots have structure: the inner darker part is called "umbra" and the outer lighter edge is called "penumbra". And you'll notice that the image is darker at the edges than at the centre; this is known as "limb darkening" and is proof that the sun is a ball of opaque gas, we are seeing further into the sun at the centre than at the edges. Taken with my FinePix A202 digital camera, and projected onto the wall using my TAL-1 4.5inch reflector. The actual image is nearly 2ft in diameter. CAUTION: projection is the ONLY safe way of viewing the Sun ;) JoeBlack

Comments (9)

JoeBlack

11:27AM | Sun, 26 October 2003

bugger just noticed the typo in the title :/

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Beemer

11:37AM | Sun, 26 October 2003

Great shot! Yes, lots of solar activity lately. Thanks for the description and safety tip. Keep the pictures coming!

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Artzy

11:41AM | Sun, 26 October 2003

Wow!
Very Interesting!
Thanks for sharing!

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Irish

11:59AM | Sun, 26 October 2003

This is quite a fantastic shot! Well done!!

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Jenai21

12:18PM | Sun, 26 October 2003

This is very interesting and education...great job...Jenn

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JVRenderer

12:21PM | Sun, 26 October 2003

Nice shot indeed. I guess ya survived the storm eh.

Dark-ShadowDragon

3:48PM | Sun, 26 October 2003

very interesting pic, good work.

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Metonicus

3:51PM | Sun, 26 October 2003

Cool pic... can't read the narrative though. All I see are blue dots after I went outside to see if I could see them myself. I'll read it after they clear.

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