Image of sunspot group

At the moment there is a large group of sunspots crossing the solar disc. If you have the right gear, solar filter etc., it's well worth taking a look. Here's a snap I took earlier this morning. The view in the eyepiece is much better than this image would indicate. A webcam should pick up the detail in the sunspots much better than my attempt.

Clear skies,

Michael, That's one big group!! It's been blindingly sunny all morning, now the damn clouds have come in again, I'll try and get an image too.

There's an aurora alert you know. What did you take this shot with?
Keith..

Woah... thats a massive group!

The "Y" symbol it kinda forms is quite interesting and the last major aurura visable here had big sunspot group that formed an "O" symbol.

OY, you lot on Earth stop your messin or I'll burn ya. :lol:

I didnt get a chance to look at it yesterday, but its clear outside so nows the time.
The first thing I thoguht when i saw it was it kinda remionded me of the circular feature in 2003 which caused our last massive aurora.

There was no aurora last night, well atleast between 8 and 1.30 there wasn't
Last night was a great night for observing, although there was a bitter wind up on the hill.

They are a very good group of spots alright. I took out the Skylux 70mm refractor, and through the projection method I took some photo's. The best of this abismal bunch I have put here!


This one was viewed through the 35mm eyepiece


This one, a bad close up, was with the 6mm eyepiece


Again, with the 6mm eyepiece.

It is a really nice day here, but there is high altitude cirrus cloud, which is hardly moving compared to the faster moving lower altitude cloud. Quite breezy here today. Its a shame I can't quite afford a Canon 300D just yet to take better pictures! These were taken with a 3.3MPixel digital camera.

While I am at it, anyone with a telescope who would like to try and view these spots by projection method (if you don't have any other), check out www.tullamoreastronomy.com , click on the Events tab at the top, and click on the June 8th Transit link, then the link at the bottom of that page for a (rough) guide to doing solar projection.



Seanie.
(the purveyor of bad PR stunts!)

Seanie,
The group reminds me of the coathanger in Vulpecula !
A while back i tried using a film SLR camera to do exactly what your trying there, for me the the biggest problem was that the camera just couldnt focus on something that near, so I had to move back to focus, but then it was too small.

The clouds here have rolled in, just as I was going out, why didnt I go out this morning, there I was sitting inside looking out thinking, I'll leave it a little longer (recovering from last night)