Sun Spots

Following the superb eclipse i decided to have a go at taking a few photos of the sun using the solar filter and the 500 mm sigma lens. On Tuesday 24 March 2015, conditions looked good with little wind and excellent viewing conditions.

I set the camera up on a tripod and used live view to find the sun, then magnified image to try and focus but found it difficult with too much light. so I tried a few focus points  at ISO 100. These are my first attempts and should be able to get better photos soon

A few sunspots were visible , no not specks of dust. The number of sunspots correlating to how active the sun is. The high powered telescopes will pick out more faint sun spots but i was pleased with this first attempt in photographing the sun and picking out three sun  spots




The sun spots can be gigantic either stretching 10 miles or 100,000 miles across. Sometimes sunspot are connected to solar flares which are linked to aurora activity.The sun goes through an 11 year cycle with increasing numbers of sunspots at the height (great aurora activity) to non.

The Peak activity occurred last year in April with a low count of 81 sun spots, so we will have to wait until 2025 for the next peak. It has been estimated that solar activity may be low for several decades to come and could lead to the earth's cooling, how much is debatable but could signify that the CO2 emission may not just be the result of global warming.