We have not been taking nature walks the way we used to so most photos of animals have been very close to home. I have been photographing the sun lately — maybe especially since the April total solar eclipse. I’ve been interested in Sun at one level or other since my youth. Though I hope to develop the ability to photograph old Sol in Ha or hydrogen-alpha (look it up) exposing chromospheric details in the plasma maelstrom of our nearest star, I remain fascinated with sunspots and the solar photosphere.
Today was another day featuring a cloudy morning and sunny afternoon. This time, however, we experienced excellent seeing for a while — just long enough to record today’s solar portrait. I’m so pleased with the “inset” image that we’re featuring it first — it’s cropped directly from the whole-disk picture. Obviously sunspots AR3713 and AR3712 are dominant features but there is a parade of features visible.
Doing this the “old-fashioned” way, this image was a single exposure manually selected as best of a larger group of shots. The chosen image is edited to produce the best available picture from the data gathered. Today’s excellent seeing made for an unusually good photo. I’m pretty pleased.
I saved a number of “also-good” exposures and may some day use them in the modern process of stacking sub-frames to create an even better view. Today, however, I’ll just sit back and enjoy what I got.
PhotonStopper 